How Has Hambela 4.0 Coffee Changed Over Time?

Ethiopia Guji Hambela coffee grew in fame after a natural batch from Hambella won first place at the 2017 Ethiopia National Taste of Harvest Competition. Chinese importers named that lot Huakui, and it showed rich strawberry and cream aromas. Hambela 4.0 continues the line with a shifted variety mix and expanded production area, so the flavor has evolved across generations.

Hambella sits in Guji, Ethiopia's largest coffee-producing region, at the country's highest-altitude coffee sub-region, reaching about 3,200 meters. Nearly 20 processing plants now operate there. DW Company expanded from one estate plant in Dimtu to four: Buku Abel, Buku Saysay, Haro Soresa, and Tirtiro Goye. The Dega variety is processed naturally at about 2,350 meters using careful coffee processing.

Since winning the championship in 2017, Huakui coffee has captured the hearts of many coffee lovers with its strawberry and cream-like aroma. From its first generation to version 4.0, this naturally processed bean from the Guji Hambella region of Ethiopia has undergone variety changes and production area expansion, with its flavor changing accordingly. This article will systematically sort out the origin story of Huakui, methods for identifying authenticity, the characteristics of the Dega variety, and Front Street Coffee's roasting and brewing practices, guiding you to a comprehensive understanding of how Huakui 4.0 differs from previous generations, and how to brew a cup of richly layered Hambella natural coffee at home.

Front Street Coffee Ethiopia Huakui 4.0

Country of Origin: Ethiopia

Region: Sidamo Guji Hambella

Processing Plant: Buku BUKU

Altitude: 2350m

Variety: Dega

Processing Method: Natural

Huakui coffee beans have attracted a large number of coffee enthusiasts with their elegant name and strawberry-like aroma. This year, this bean has been updated to version 4.0, so what differences exist between it and the earlier Huakui coffee? Front Street Coffee will analyze them one by one below.

Region Introduction Hambella (usually translated as "罕贝拉") is located in Guji (GUJI), Ethiopia's largest coffee-producing region, and is administratively under the Oromia Region. To the west, Hambella faces the Kochore region of Yirgacheffe across a mountain, with a highland about 30 kilometers wide and up to 3,200 meters above sea level lying between them; its southeast and north sides are adjacent to Guji's Shakiso, Uraga, and Kercha sub-regions respectively. It is Ethiopia's highest-altitude coffee sub-region (while Harrar is Ethiopia's highest-altitude main producing region).

At present, the Hambella region has gathered nearly 20 processing plants of various scales. In 2017, a natural batch from the "Buku Abel" processing plant under DW Company won first place in the Ethiopia National Taste of Harvest Competition. Chinese green bean importers named this bean "Huakui," and at that time it displayed rich strawberry and cream aromas. After that, DW Company expanded from the original one estate processing plant in Dimtu, the core producing area of Hambella, to four plants: Buku Abel, Buku Saysay, Haro Soresa, and Tirtiro Goye, with an annual output of about 1,100 tons of coffee. Front Street Coffee also sells coffee products produced by the Buku Abel processing plant.

Buku Abel Processing Plant Buku Abel means "NEW," that is, a new place, in the local Ethiopian language. In this ancient country with more than two thousand years of history and a population of 100 million, although the East African Rift has blocked the road to Asia, new virgin land on this plateau is still constantly waiting to be cultivated. Compared with thousands of years of cultural accumulation, this is a fairly recently developed area.

Buku Abel is located in southeastern Ethiopia and is an extremely high-altitude indigenous tribe in the Hambella area of the Guji producing region, with a population of about 30,000. This village is similar to most coffee gardens in Ethiopia, with coffee trees growing naturally in wild primary forests. Coffee farmers have passed down their traditions here for generations, planting native bananas while interspersing local native coffee varieties among the banana groves.

Is Huakui coffee also divided into real and fake? In 2017, Ethiopian green bean company DW sent its 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 plant won the TOH Ethiopia championship with rich strawberry and cream aromas. That batch of green beans was introduced into China that year by Beijing green bean trader Hongshun, and in the same year Li Jianfei used this bean to win second place in the 2017 World Brewers Cup China region. Among a crowd of Geisha competition beans, this Ethiopian bean performed especially prominently, and was therefore given the name "Huakui." (Geisha means geisha in Japanese, while Huakui refers to the leading geisha among geisha, thereby highlighting the excellence of this bean.)

Therefore, if understood in a narrow sense, only the championship batch from the 2017 TOH natural group entering China can be called Huakui coffee. Of course, it would be a pity if this beautiful name only appeared briefly, so afterward Hongshun continued to introduce coffee beans from the "Buku Abel" processing plant in the Hambella producing region, naming them successively Huakui 2.0, Huakui 3.0, and Huakui 3.1 to distinguish them from previous batches and represent different batches or harvest seasons. At this point, Huakui coffee still maintained certain characteristics, namely that it was purchased and introduced by Hongshun, and the producing area was still locked to the "Buku Abel" processing plant in Hambella. Of course, as an agricultural product, coffee will have different flavors every year.

[First Generation Huakui G1] Smooth, passion fruit, fermented wine aroma, jackfruit, strawberry. [Huakui 2.0] The overall taste is clean, the berry aroma is more obvious, and it carries a nutty aroma, making the taste richer. [Huakui 3.0] Light strawberry jam, black tea tea-like body, with a relatively short sweet finish. [Huakui 3.1] Floral, creamy, tropical fruit, caramel, with a lasting sweet aftertaste.

The Huakui produced in the new harvest season of 2020 was named Huakui 4.0 to distinguish it from previous Huakui. 2020 was the fourth year of this Huakui coffee bean, and its producing area had expanded to several times its original size. Coupled with more scientific planting management, the flavor of Huakui 4.0 was even more outstanding and received praise from many coffee enthusiasts. Therefore, Front Street Coffee also purchased this batch of new-harvest Huakui 4.0 for roasting and cupping. From this, Front Street believes that to judge whether it is Huakui coffee, one should check whether it was imported through the green bean trader Hongshun. So if you pay attention to foreign coffee roasters, you will find that abroad they do not know Huakui, only Hambella.

Dega Coffee Bean Variety This year Ethiopia held the Cup of Excellence (CoE) for the first time, and the classification of coffee varieties among the top 28 was unexpectedly detailed. For Dega, ranked 21st, there are two quite different versions of the origin of its name. One theory is that the name Dega comes from a type of firewood, and the aroma of Dega during roasting is very similar to the smell of this firewood burning. Another explanation says that Dega (dega) is the root word in Ethiopian meaning "highland and shady place," and Dega often grows in high-altitude areas. Unfortunately, because Dega did not enter the top 14 in this COE competition, no relevant flavor description of it was collected. And the Huakui 4.0 that Front Street Coffee obtained this time is precisely coffee beans of the Dega variety.

Green Bean Analysis From this batch of Huakui 4.0 purchased by Front Street Coffee, it can be seen that the bean shape of Huakui 4.0 is smaller than the other two Huakui 3.0 beans, which stems from variety differences. Huakui 3.0 belongs to Ethiopian native varieties, while Huakui 4.0 is the Dega variety. In addition, it can be observed that the two Huakui 3.0 beans are relatively uniform in size because the coffee beans were screened after picking, while Huakui 4.0 was not screened, so the beans appear uneven in size.

Coffee Processing Method The natural sun-drying processing method is the most traditional processing method. After harvest, the fruit is naturally sun-dried. The steps are as follows: 1. After harvesting, coffee farmers place the fruit directly on the drying yard and dry it under sunlight; 2. During the drying process, it needs to be turned and stirred at appropriate times to avoid uneven drying or fermentation; 3. After several days, it is dried; 4. The dried green beans are hulled to remove the pulp and parchment, and the green beans are obtained.

Advantages: Coffee fruit processed by the natural method retains pectin during processing, and pectin itself carries sweetness. During the sun-drying process, sugars are transformed into the coffee beans, so the processed coffee has a relatively strong sweetness, rich mouthfeel, and prominent layering. Disadvantages: There will be more defective beans, the appearance of the beans is not uniform, and they easily absorb odors and earthy flavors from the ground.

Front Street Coffee Roasting Analysis Front Street Coffee will refer to the flavor description provided by the green bean supplier, and then look at the moisture content of the beans. The green beans just received have a fermented wine aroma of coffee flowers, completely different from the grassy aroma of ordinary green beans; moreover, Huakui green beans vary in size, with most being pointed at both ends (Ethiopia Heirloom Ethiopian native variety), and the moisture content is good, around 11%, but they are not very hard SHB beans. Because the beans are dense and hard, the dehydration time is extended at the beginning, and the temperature is raised into first crack before first crack, trying to retain small-molecule aromatic substances such as floral notes and reduce their loss.

Front Street Coffee uses a Taiwan Yangjia 800N machine, charging beans at 190°C, and completes dehydration and turning yellow at nearly 6 minutes. (The yellow point is about 150-153°C.) First crack begins at around 9 minutes 50 seconds (Huakui's first crack occurs later than ordinary beans, and the cracking sound is very weak). For the development time after first crack, it is recommended to control it at no more than 1 minute 30 seconds and no less than 1 minute. (It is recommended to open the damper wider and lower the heat to regulate the speed.) Smell the aroma with a sampling spoon; at around 193°C, a strawberry jam aroma can be smelled, and it can be discharged and dropped. The overall time is best controlled within 11 minutes.

Front Street Coffee Brewing Sharing In order to fully extract the rich layering of Huakui coffee beans, Front Street uses a relatively high water temperature and a finer grind for extraction, but to avoid over-extraction caused by high temperature, it uses a faster-flow dripper, such as the V60 dripper. The V60 dripper has a 60° cone shape. The conical angle allows the coffee grounds to be concentrated, and when pouring water it also allows the water flow to automatically gather toward the center of the dripper, ensuring sufficient contact time between water and coffee grounds, thereby extracting suitable coffee liquid. In addition, the ribs on the inner side of the V60 dripper extend clockwise in a spiral from the bottom to the top, leaving enough space between the filter paper and the dripper, making the water flow smooth. Combined with the large hole at the bottom, the flow rate is relatively faster than many drippers.

Brewing Parameters: V60 dripper, water temperature 90°C, water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, coffee dose 15g, fine granulated sugar grind size (80% passing rate on China No. 20 standard sieve)

Using Front Street's three-stage brewing, first preheat the coffee pot and dripper, pour in 15g of coffee grounds, and gently tap level. Pour in 30g of water for blooming for 30 seconds. A blooming time that is too long is not recommended, as it easily produces astringency.

For the second stage, pour in 120g of water in a concentric circular motion from the center outward. The pouring should be completed in about 1 minute. When the coffee bed is almost visible, pour the final stage, using the same pouring method to pour in 90g of water. After all the water has flowed into the server, remove the dripper to end extraction. The brewing time is 2 minutes 05 seconds.

Flavor Description: Citrus acidity, full berry juice mouthfeel, lemon black tea tea-like body, lasting sweetness.

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