How Does Natural Coffee Bean Processing Shape Sidamo Flavor?

Sidamo is a key Ethiopian specialty region where natural processing dominates, producing intense sweetness, juicy fruitiness and a light fermented note. The green beans look slightly grayish with uneven particle size. Acidity ranges from soft to intense, and the cup pairs sweetness with spice and a smooth, medium-viscosity body.

Washed Sidamo leans toward nutty fruit aromas and mild cocoa, while natural Sidamo runs floral with a possible slight earthy taste. Light or medium roast suits single origin; medium or dark roast works in blends and as an Espresso base. Sub-regions Guji and Arsi, plus the origin of Huakui coffee, help explain the range.

Sidamo is an important specialty coffee region in Ethiopia, primarily using the natural process, with intense flavors, prominent sweetness, and notes of fermentation and juicy fruitiness. This article starts from Sidamo's varieties, processing methods, and regional terroir to analyze the sources of its floral aroma, fruity acidity, and full-bodied mouthfeel, and further introduces sub-regions such as Guji and Arsi, as well as the origin of Huakui coffee. At the same time, Front Street Coffee shares the pour-over parameters and brewing steps for natural Sidamo to help coffee enthusiasts recreate the floral and fruity aromas and high sweetness at home.

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If washed Yirgacheffe is Ethiopia's signature, its bright floral and fruity profile always makes you drink cup after cup, even wondering whether you are drinking a cup of fruit tea. So, how does Sidamo, another famous Ethiopian specialty region, perform?

Sidamo and Yirgacheffe both belong to Ethiopia's specialty coffee landscape. Yirgacheffe is mostly washed, while Sidamo has both washed and natural, but is more dominated by natural. Front Street's two beans from the Sidamo region are both natural processed. Front Street believes that natural beans often have richer flavors and higher sweetness than washed beans, with a slight fermented note and a texture close to fruit juice. Overall, washed and natural each have their own merits and are both favorites among coffee lovers.

Aroma and mouthfeel characteristics of Sidamo

Sidamo green beans are slightly grayish in color, with uneven particle sizes, some large and some small. Its acidity can be soft or intense, its body can be thick or light, and it combines sweetness with spice. It is one of the common garden coffees of the southern Ethiopian highlands. Unlike typical African coffees, Sidamo has clear fruity acidity, a smooth mouthfeel, and brings out delicate floral and herbal aromas.

Natural Sidamo leans toward floral notes, but may have a slight earthy taste; washed Sidamo shows nutty fruit aromas and a mild cocoa note. What they share is a smooth mouthfeel, moderate viscosity, and pleasant acidity and aroma. Light or medium roast is suitable for single origin, while medium or dark roast is suitable for blends and as a base for high-quality Espresso.

Washed Sidamo is light green, with relatively small beans in a long oval shape, plump fruit, and overall stable quality. The aroma is fragrant and rich, with a long finish after drinking, carrying a kind of wild beauty. It is elegant with a touch of playfulness, gentle and pleasant on entry, followed by bright lemon-like fruity acidity that brings a strong sensory impact. The mouthfeel is unique and full-bodied, with a distinctive and pleasing sweetness, and the aftertaste gradually reveals a unique sweetness.

Overview of Ethiopian coffee

In Ethiopia, coffee is both the main livelihood for many people and an important source of national income. Coffee has long been integrated into local culture and the economy. Ethiopia is the world's sixth-largest coffee producer. According to reports, in 2018 about 100 million people worldwide were directly or indirectly engaged in the coffee industry, and Ethiopia's coffee workers accounted for 20% of them. In 2017, the country produced about 470,000 tons of green coffee beans, of which about 160,000 tons were exported, meaning Ethiopia exports less than half of its total production, with the rest consumed domestically.

Coffee cultivation in Ethiopia is mainly concentrated in the west and south, and more than half of it belongs to smallholder farming, also called garden coffee, which is Ethiopia's main production method. It is understood that nearly 1.2 million households locally make a living from coffee cultivation, with each household cultivating no less than 4 hectares. The so-called garden coffee refers to farmers managing coffee trees together with other cash crops in their own backyards, usually planted alongside banana trees, forming a unique green landscape in front of and behind every household.

Because the coffee yield from smallholders is limited, local farmer cooperatives or processing stations of various sizes are set up to handle green bean processing in the area. Every harvest season, farmers pack their own coffee cherries and send them to nearby processing stations (cooperatives) close to water sources for unified processing, and then sell them under the name of the processing station. For example, the Gedeb cooperative coffee beans on Front Street's bean list are produced by collecting coffee cherries grown in Yirgacheffe town, which farmers send to the town for unified washed processing, and finally output and sold worldwide under the cooperative's name.

Sidamo production region

Sidamo is one of Ethiopia's highest-yielding coffee-growing regions, producing large quantities of high-quality green beans every year. This region was formed in 1942 after Ethiopia broke free from Italian rule, and its name comes from the local indigenous ethnic group, the Sidamo. Through cupping, Front Street found that Sidamo coffee is known for its rich and full-bodied mouthfeel, complex sweetness and aroma, refreshing and soft acidity, and a long sweet aftertaste. For example, both Santavini and Huakui on Front Street's bean list come from the famous Sidamo.

Sidamo's coffee flavors are very diverse. Different soil types, microclimates, and countless native coffee varieties, together with the towering mountains, highlands, plateaus, valleys, and plains within the region, create diverse terrain. The geology here belongs to fertile volcanic soil with good drainage. The soil depth is nearly two meters, and the topsoil is dark brown or brown. Therefore, in order for everyone to taste the flavors of different Ethiopian regions in coffee's place of origin, Front Street has brought in more than a dozen Ethiopian coffee beans from different regions, covering both natural and washed, to satisfy everyone's coffee preferences.

Sidamo's greatest advantage lies in maintaining soil fertility through the cycling of organic matter, using fallen leaves from surrounding trees or residual plant roots as fertilizer. This creates the obvious differences and characteristics of the coffee produced in the town. In the 2010-2012 period, it continuously received high scores of 92-94 from the authoritative American coffee evaluation website CR. This shows how extraordinary the green beans from this region are.

Guji production region

In Front Street's view, the most famous coffee from Sidamo is undoubtedly Huakui coffee. This bean comes from Hambella, located in Guji, Ethiopia's largest coffee-producing region. Administratively it belongs to Oromia State and was once part of the Sidamo production region, but in 2010 it was made into a new independent region by the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). Western Hambella faces Yirgacheffe's Kochere across the mountains. Between the two production regions is a highland barrier at an altitude of 3,200 meters and about 30 kilometers wide. The significant day-night temperature difference created by its geographical characteristics gives the area all the terroir conditions needed to produce high-quality specialty coffee. To the southeast and north it borders Guji's Shakiso, Uraga, and Kercha sub-regions respectively, and it is Ethiopia's highest-altitude coffee sub-region.

At present, the Hambella production region has nearly 20 processing stations of various scales. In 2017, Ethiopia's DW Green Bean Company sent their coffee beans to the TOH (the Taste Of Harvest) green bean competition hosted by the African Coffee Association. A natural batch from the "Buku Abel" processing station won the TOH Ethiopia championship with its strong strawberry and cream aroma. That year, this batch of green beans was introduced into China by Beijing green bean trader Hongshun. In the same year, Li Jianfei used this bean to win second place in the China region of the 2017 World Brewers Cup. This Ethiopian bean stood out especially among many Geisha competition beans, and was therefore given the name "Huakui." (Geisha in Japanese means geisha, and Huakui means the chief of geishas, indicating the outstanding nature of this bean.)

Subsequently, DW Company added processing stations in Dimtu, the core production area of Hambella, namely "Buku Abel," "Buku Saysay," "Haro Soresa," and "Tirtiro Goye," with an annual coffee output of about 1,100 tons. In terms of growing regions and processing stations, among all these estates and processing stations, only the processing area from the "Buku Abel" processing station covers the small production area that originally produced the natural coffee bean "Huakui." In other words: only the natural coffee beans produced and processed by Buku Abel can truly be called "Huakui." Coffee is an agricultural product and is also affected by the climate and environment each year, so the flavor of the coffee beans still varies slightly from year to year. To distinguish each year's Huakui coffee beans, DW Company named them Huakui 2.0, Huakui 3.0, Huakui 3.1, Huakui 4.0, Huakui 5.0, and Huakui 6.0, and this year's 2024 Huakui 8.0 has also been listed and meets everyone.

Arsi production region

Arsi is also a coffee production region within the Sidamo coffee region. West Arsi is located between the famous Yirgacheffe coffee-growing area and Hararge, in the western part of the Sidamo area. The name of this area comes from a branch of the Oromo people who have long lived here. West Arsi consists of three woredas (Ethiopia's third-level administrative divisions): Arsi, Bale, and East Shewa. About 88.52% of West Arsi's population is Oromo, which is very important in coffee history because they were the first tribe in human history to drink coffee, and half of the coffee produced in Ethiopia comes from this region.

Coffee cultivation in the West Arsi production region uses a smallholder model. The average smallholder farm is not large, about 2-3 hectares, but even so, their area is often slightly larger than the usual 1.5-2 hectares in most parts of Ethiopia. Although current coffee cultivation technology is still in the development stage, compared with other production regions, coffee cultivation technology in West Arsi develops very quickly. Coffee farmers do not need to hire temporary or full-time workers, but instead select coffee with the help of family members. This allows them to better control coffee quality, and processing stations usually pay extra for fully ripe red cherries, greatly increasing coffee farmers' motivation.

Huakui coffee bean variety

Like most Ethiopian coffee beans, Huakui belongs to Ethiopia's local native varieties, also known as Heirloom native varieties. In Ethiopia, the garden planting system is the cultivation model on which the vast majority of smallholder coffee farmers depend for survival, and Heirloom native varieties are the "unknown varieties" from their backyards. The coffee trees may have been left by a previous owner of the land, or obtained through sharing among neighbors, or may possibly have been grown from seeds from another production area. Various coffee plants are interplanted with other cash crops on the land, and only harvested and sold when ripe.

Therefore, Heirloom does not refer to a single type of coffee variety. It represents a green bean blend from the production area. The coffee gathers the harvests of multiple smallholders from the same period and is combined together. A single lot may contain dozens or even hundreds of varieties that have not been subdivided. Precisely because there are differences among varieties and the blending method differs each time, these coffees vary in bean particle size, dimensions, and shape, some large and some small, some long and some round, and can be understood as a "blended lot."

Coffee bean processing methods

Sidamo coffee beans have two processing methods: washed and natural. The washed method involves screening high-quality cherries, removing the skin and pulp, then soaking and fermenting them in a tank, after which they are dried to a moisture content of about 12%. The natural method is relatively much simpler: using sunlight, the cherries are directly dried to a moisture content of about 12%, and then the skin and pulp are removed.

Different processing methods also lead to different flavors in the coffee beans. Washed coffee better reflects Sidamo coffee beans' original citrus acidity and floral and herbal aromas, while natural coffee adds aroma on top of the original flavor.

Front Street Sidamo natural coffee bean pour-over parameters shared:

For coffee brewing, Front Street has always believed that the freshness of coffee beans has a great relationship with coffee flavor. Therefore, the coffee beans shipped by Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) are all within 5 days of the roast date. Front Street's roasting principle is "freshly roasted good coffee," so that every customer who places an order receives the freshest coffee when it arrives. Coffee's resting period is about 4-7 days, so when customers receive it, it is exactly at its best flavor.

As a light-roasted Sidamo coffee, Front Street chose: V60 dripper, water temperature 90°C, water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, coffee dose 15g, grind size (80% passing through China's No. 20 standard sieve)

Use staged extraction, using twice the coffee grounds' weight in water for blooming, that is, 30 grams of water for a 30-second bloom. The reason the blooming process is needed is to allow the coffee grounds to release internal carbon dioxide gas, thereby making the later extraction more stable. Pour in a small stream in circles until 125 grams, then pause; continue pouring until 225 grams and stop. After the water in the dripper has finished dripping, remove the dripper. Starting timing from the beginning of pouring, the extraction time is 2'00". Next, pick up the entire cup of coffee, shake it evenly, and then pour it into a cup for tasting.

[Front Street natural Sidamo coffee flavor]: The floral and fruity aroma is very obvious, with citrus, passion fruit, strawberry, and oolong tea, and a very high sweetness.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.