Ethiopian Sidama Coffee: Washed and Natural Styles

Ethiopian Sidama coffee comes from the southern highlands and shows fruit acidity, a smooth body, and delicate floral and herbal notes. Natural Sidama leans floral with a slight earthy taste, while washed Sidama brings nut-like fruitiness and a mild cocoa note. Both share a smooth, slightly viscous mouthfeel. Sidama green beans are grayish, uneven in size, and can be soft or intensely acidic.

Ethiopian coffee is grown by smallholders working through cooperatives, a model that keeps lots traceable to sub-regions. Guji Hambela and West Arsi sit within this landscape, and the Huakui name rose to fame from that area. Front Street lists two naturally processed Sidama lots. Beans of any coffee bean processing method respond to light or medium roast when brewed as a single origin.

Sidamo is an important specialty coffee region in the southern highlands of Ethiopia, known for its diverse flavors and natural-process beans. This article starts with a comparison between Sidamo and Yirgacheffe, sorting out the differences in aroma, acidity, and mouthfeel brought by washed and natural processing; reviews the smallholder farming and cooperative model of Ethiopia's coffee industry; further extends to the Guji Hambela sub-region and the story of how "Huakui" rose to fame, as well as the current development of the West Arsi region. The article also includes Front Street's brewing parameter suggestions for Sidamo coffee, and flavor descriptions of beans such as natural Arsi and Huakui 5.0, making it suitable for enthusiasts who want a systematic understanding of Ethiopian coffee regions.

When it comes to Ethiopian specialty coffee, many people first think of washed Yirgacheffe, whose bright floral and fruity aroma often makes people mistake it for fruit tea. So, what kind of experience will coffee from Sidamo, another well-known specialty region in Ethiopia, bring?

Sidamo and Yirgacheffe both belong to Ethiopia's specialty coffee regions. Yirgacheffe is mainly washed, while Sidamo has both washed and natural processing, with natural lots being more common on the market. The two Sidamo coffee beans currently listed by Front Street are both natural processed. Front Street believes that natural beans tend to be more prominent in flavor intensity, sweetness, and fermented notes, with a juicy texture when drunk. Of course, washed and natural each have their own strengths, and both are favorites among coffee lovers.

The unique aroma and mouthfeel of Sidamo

Sidamo green beans are grayish in color, not uniform in size, with acidity that can be soft or intense and body that can be heavy or light. They combine sweetness and spice, and are a typical garden coffee of the southern highlands of Ethiopia. Compared with most African coffees, Sidamo's fruit acidity is clearer, the mouthfeel is smooth, and it is accompanied by delicate floral and herbal notes.

Natural Sidamo leans toward floral notes but carries a slight earthy taste; washed Sidamo presents nut-like fruitiness and a mild cocoa note. What they share is a smooth mouthfeel with some viscosity, and both acidity and aroma are pleasant. Light or medium roast is suitable for single origin, while medium or dark roast is suitable for blending and as a base for high-quality espresso.

Washed Sidamo green beans are light green, not large, long oval in shape, full-bodied, with overall stable quality and a fragrant, mellow smell. The finish is long, with a kind of wild beauty, both elegant and a little playful. The entry is mild and pleasant, followed by a strong impact of bright citric acidity, a unique and mellow mouthfeel, a distinctive and pleasing sweetness, and a finish that rises slowly with a special sweetness.

Ethiopian coffee

In Ethiopia, coffee is both the livelihood of most people and an important source of national income, while also being deeply embedded in local culture and the economy.

Ethiopia is the world's sixth-largest coffee producer. Reports say that 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 that. 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.

Ethiopia's coffee cultivation is mainly concentrated in the western and southern regions, with more than half using the smallholder farming model, also called garden coffee, which is Ethiopia's main production method. It is understood that nearly 1.2 million households there 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, creating a unique green landscape in front of and behind every household.

Because smallholder coffee production is limited, farmer cooperatives or processing plants of different scales are set up locally to handle green bean processing in the area. Every harvest season, farmers pack their coffee cherries and send them to a processing plant (cooperative) near a water source for unified processing, then sell them under the cooperative's name. For example, the Gedeb cooperative coffee beans on Front Street's bean list are made by collecting coffee cherries grown in Yirgacheffe town, sending them to the town for unified washing, and finally producing and selling them worldwide under the cooperative's name.

Sidamo

Sidamo is one of Ethiopia's highest-yielding coffee-growing regions, producing a large amount 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 Sidama people.

Through cupping, Front Street found that Sidamo coffee is known for its rich, full-bodied mouthfeel, complex sweetness and aroma, clean and soft acidity, and long-lasting sweetness. For example, Santa Vini and Huakui on Front Street's bean list both come from Sidamo.

Sidamo's coffee flavors are very diverse. Different soil types, microclimates, and countless native coffee varieties, plus the towering mountains, highlands, plateaus, valleys, and plains within the region, make the terrain highly varied. The geology there consists of fertile volcanic soil with good drainage, soil depth close to two meters, and topsoil that is dark brown or brown.

Therefore, in order to let enthusiasts taste the flavors of different Ethiopian regions in coffee's place of origin, Front Street has acquired more than a dozen Ethiopian coffee beans from different regions, covering both natural and washed, trying as much as possible to satisfy everyone's coffee preferences.

Sidamo's greatest advantage lies in maintaining soil fertility through organic matter cycling, relying on fallen leaves from surrounding trees or plant residues as fertilizer, which is why coffees produced in towns differ noticeably and have distinctive characteristics. In 2010 to 2012, the region continuously received high scores of 92 to 94 from the authoritative American coffee evaluation website CR, showing the outstanding quality of its green beans.

Guji region

In Front Street's view, the most famous Sidamo coffee is Huakui. This bean comes from Hambela, located in Guji, Ethiopia's largest coffee region. Administratively it belongs to Oromia State and was once part of the Sidamo region, but in 2010 it was made an independent region by the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). Western Hambela faces Yirgacheffe Kochere across the mountains, with a 3,200-meter-high, about 30-kilometer-wide highland between the two regions. The geography creates a significant day-night temperature difference, giving the area the terroir conditions to produce high-quality specialty coffee. It borders the Guji sub-regions of Shakiso, Uraga, and Kercha to the southeast, south, and north respectively, and is Ethiopia's highest-altitude coffee sub-region.

At present, the Hambela region has nearly 20 processing plants of various scales. In 2017, Ethiopia's DW green bean company sent coffee beans to the TOH (the Taste Of Harvest) green bean competition hosted by the African Coffee Association, and a natural lot from the "Buku Abel" processing plant won the TOH Ethiopia championship with rich strawberry and cream aromas. That year this lot of green beans was introduced into China 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. This Ethiopian bean stood out among many Geisha competition beans, so it was given the name "Huakui." (Geisha means geisha in Japanese, while Huakui means the top geisha, used to show how outstanding this bean is.)

Afterward, DW company added processing plants in Dimtu, the core production area of Hambella: "Buku Abel," "Buku Saysay," "Haro Soresa," and "Tirtiro Goye," with annual coffee output of about 1,100 tons. In terms of growing regions and processing plants, among all these estates and processing sites, only lots from within the processing area of the "Buku Abel" processing plant cover the small production area that originally produced the natural coffee bean "Huakui." In other words, only natural coffee beans produced and processed by Buku Abel can truly be called "Huakui." Coffee is an agricultural product, and the climate environment differs each year, so the flavor of the coffee beans will also change slightly. To distinguish each year's Huakui coffee beans, DW company calls 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 region

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

Huakui coffee bean variety

Huakui's variety, like most Ethiopian coffee beans, belongs to Ethiopia's local native varieties, also called Heirloom native varieties. In Ethiopia, the garden planting system is the cultivation model on which the vast majority of small 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 there is a chance they were cultivated from seeds from another origin. Various coffee plants are interplanted with other cash crops on the land, and only picked and sold when ripe.

Therefore, Heirloom does not refer to a single type of coffee variety; it represents a green bean blend from the origin. The coffee brings together the harvests of multiple smallholders from the same period and combines them, so a single lot may contain dozens or even hundreds of varieties that have not been subdivided. It is precisely because of differences among varieties, and because the mixing method is different each time, that these coffees differ in bean size, dimensions, and shape, some large and some small, some long and some round. They can be understood as "blended-type lots."

Coffee bean processing methods

Sidamo coffee beans have two processing methods: washed and natural. The washed method selects high-quality cherries, removes the skin and pulp, then soaks and ferments them in a tank, after which they are dried to a moisture content of about 12%. The natural method is relatively much simpler: it uses sunlight to dry the cherries directly to a moisture content of about 12%, then removes the skin and pulp.

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

Front Street's parameters for brewing Sidamo coffee:

For coffee brewing, Front Street has always believed that the freshness of coffee beans greatly affects flavor. Therefore, the coffee beans shipped by Front Street 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. Coffee's resting period is about 4 to 7 days, so when customers receive it, it is exactly at its best flavor.

For 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, blooming with twice the coffee dose in water, that is, 30 grams of water for 30 seconds. The reason blooming is needed is to let the coffee grounds release internal carbon dioxide, thereby making later-stage 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 dripped through, remove the dripper. Time from the start of pouring, and the extraction time is 2'00". Next, pick up the whole cup of coffee and swirl it to mix, then pour it into a cup and taste.

[Natural Arsi coffee flavor]: It smells of berries and honey. On the palate, jam-like sweetness spreads throughout the mouth, very sweet, with nectarine flavor in the finish and a juicy mouthfeel. After cooling, it is more like a cup of plum and nectarine juice.

[Natural Huakui 5.0 coffee flavor]: Floral and fruity aromas are very obvious: citrus, passion fruit, strawberry, oolong tea, with very high sweetness.

In the flavor comparison of these two beans, Arsi is slightly better in fruity sweetness and juiciness, especially when hot, when the jam and honey flavors are irresistible, while the juicy feel becomes even more obvious after the temperature drops, very comfortable.

Huakui 8.0 leans toward tropical fruit flavors, and the alternating contrast between sweetness and acidity is very surprising. Compared with the two, Huakui has a stronger fermented note.

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