Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Zelelu Ararso

I've been excited about this coffee for so long I could barely contain myself. Some of our favorite coffee is natural processed Ethiopia Halo Bariti. And this is a microlot from within the Halo Bariti co-op. It's a spectacular find.

Zelelu Ararso is one of the farmers within the co-op of 255 farmers in wild, remote Halo Bariti. He sorted his crop to a grade 1 status and kept it separated from the rest of the coffee and sold it at a premium. He's 58 years old and expert at what he does.

It is being marketed and officially labeled as a Yirgacheffe, but its really too far south to be part of Yirgacheffe. Halo Bariti is a new fair trade organic co-op that has only been in existence since 2012. The members of the co-op own their own land and can boast that they have the highest altitude to work with in the entire country of Ethiopia (4800 to 6800 feet above sea level). It's an area where wild, heirloom coffee grows naturally, and even though this co-op is cultivating the coffee plants for commercial sale, they still grow heirloom varietals native to their land, some of which aren't grown anywhere else in the world.

This is a natural (dry) process coffee and so we are roasting it lightly -- barely even out of the 1st cracks. We can get away with that because the coffee is less acidic and has a thicker body than you would expect in a natural Ethiopian. It doesn't seem to matter if you roast it slow or too fast or if you air roast it or drum roast it. It doesn't matter if you get it a few degrees too dark. It's just good coffee. We are tasting blueberry, grape, blackberry jam, chocolate in the finish.

US Arrival September 2021