When Ethiopian specialty coffee is mentioned, the fresh floral and fruity aromas of Yirgacheffe often come to mind first, but the equally renowned Sidamo region is often underestimated. This hometown of garden coffee in southern Ethiopia offers both the bright citric acidity and floral notes of washed beans, and the intense fermented sweetness and jammy texture of natural beans—a diversity of styles that is truly fascinating. Front Street Coffee has selected multiple beans from Sidamo and Guji, covering both washed and natural, from Santavini to Huakui 8.0, to take you through the terroir charm of this highland. This article will fully unpack the world of Sidamo coffee, from origin characteristics and processing methods to brewing parameters and flavor comparisons.

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Washed Yirgacheffe is practically the signature calling card of Ethiopian coffee. That clear fruity character and lingering floral finish are unforgettable at first sip—it can even create an illusion: is this really a cup of coffee? It tastes more like a pot of fruit tea. So the question arises: how does coffee from Sidamo, another well-known Ethiopian specialty region, perform?

Sidamo and Yirgacheffe are both important specialty coffee origins in Ethiopia. Yirgacheffe is dominated by the washed processing method, while Sidamo offers both washed and natural, with natural lots making up a larger proportion. The two beans from Sidamo on Front Street's menu are both natural-processed. Front Street believes that the natural method gives coffee a fuller flavor expression, higher sweetness, and a distinct fermented character, drinking with a pronounced juicy quality. Overall, whether washed or natural, each has its own merits and is a beloved favorite that coffee enthusiasts find hard to give up.

The unique aroma and mouthfeel of Sidamo

Sidamo green beans have a slightly grayish surface, with varying sizes—some coarse, some fine. Its acidity can be soft or vibrant, its body light or heavy, combining sweetness with spicy notes. As one of the representatives of garden coffee from the southern highlands of Ethiopia, what sets Sidamo apart from ordinary African coffee is its clear fruit acidity, smooth mouthfeel, and delicate floral and herbal aromas.

Natural Sidamo leans toward floral notes but carries a faint earthy hint; the washed version shows nut-like fruity aromas mixed with slight cocoa notes. What both share is a smooth mouthfeel, viscous texture, and pleasantly comfortable acidity. Light or medium roasts suit single-origin brewing, while medium-dark roasts work well for blends or as a base for premium espresso.

Washed Sidamo green beans are light green, relatively small, elongated oval in shape, plump, with uniform overall quality and a fragrant, mellow aroma. A single drop on the palate leaves a long finish, carrying a kind of wild beauty. It is elegant yet playful—gentle and pleasant at first sip, followed by a strong impact of bright lemon acidity, with a unique and mellow mouthfeel, a distinctive and pleasing sweetness, and a finish that slowly rises with a special sweetness.

Ethiopian Coffee

In Ethiopia, coffee is both the main livelihood for most people and an important source of national income. This crop has long been deeply embedded in the country's cultural and economic fabric. Ethiopia is the world's sixth-largest coffee producer. According to statistics, in 2018 about 100 million people worldwide were directly or indirectly engaged in the coffee industry, and Ethiopian coffee workers accounted for 20% of that. In 2017, the country's green coffee production was about 470,000 tons, 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 western and southern regions, with more than half using the smallholder model, also called garden coffee, which is the dominant form of Ethiopian coffee production. It is reported that nearly 1.2 million households make a living from coffee cultivation, with each household farming no less than 4 hectares. Garden coffee means farmers grow coffee trees mixed with other cash crops in their own backyards, usually alongside banana trees, creating a unique green landscape around every home.

Because smallholder coffee production is limited, farmer cooperatives or processing plants of various scales are set up locally to handle green coffee processing for the area. Each harvest season, farmers collect the cherries from their own coffee trees and deliver them to a nearby processing plant (cooperative) close to a water source for unified processing, after which the coffee is sold externally under the processing plant's name.

For example, the Gutingting Cooperative coffee beans on Front Street's menu are made from coffee cherries grown in Yirgacheffe town, delivered by farmers to the town for unified washed processing, and finally produced and sold worldwide under the cooperative's name.

Sidamo

Sidamo is one of Ethiopia's highest-yielding coffee-growing regions, producing large quantities of high-quality green coffee every year. The region was established in 1942 after Ethiopia broke free from Italian rule, and its name comes from the local indigenous Sidama people.

Through cupping, Front Street has found that Sidamo coffee is known for its rich, full-bodied mouthfeel, complex layers of sweetness and aroma, clean and soft acidity, and a long lingering sweetness. For example, Santavini and Huakui on Front Street's menu both come from the famous Sidamo region.

Sidamo's coffee flavors are extremely diverse. Different soil types, microclimates, and countless native coffee varieties together create this richness. The region contains towering mountains, highlands, plateaus, valleys, and plains, with varied terrain. The geology is fertile, well-drained volcanic soil with a soil depth of nearly two meters, and the topsoil is dark brown or brown.

Therefore, to let everyone taste the flavors of different Ethiopian regions—the birthplace of coffee—Front Street has brought in over a dozen coffee beans from different origins, covering both natural and washed, enough to satisfy all kinds of coffee preferences.

Sidamo's greatest advantage is that soil fertility is maintained through organic matter cycling, relying on fallen leaves from surrounding trees or plant residues as natural fertilizer. This also creates the notable differences and characteristics of the coffee produced in this town. In 2010–2012, Sidamo continuously received high scores of 92 to 94 from the authoritative American coffee evaluation site CR, demonstrating the extraordinary strength of green beans from this region.

Guji Region

In Front Street's view, the most famous coffee in the Sidamo region is undoubtedly Huakui. This bean comes from Hambella, located in Guji, Ethiopia's largest coffee-producing region, administratively under Oromia. The area once belonged to the Sidamo region but was independently classified as a new region by the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) in 2010. Western Hambella faces Yirgacheffe's Kochere across the mountains, with a 3,200-meter-high, roughly 30-kilometer-wide highland between the two regions. This geography creates a significant day-night temperature difference, giving the area superior terroir conditions for producing high-quality specialty coffee. Hambella borders Guji's Shakiso, Uraga, and Kercha sub-regions to the southeast and north respectively, and is Ethiopia's highest-altitude coffee sub-region.

At present, the Hambella 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. A natural lot from the "Buku Abel" processing plant won the TOH Ethiopia championship with its intense strawberry and cream aromas. That year, the lot was introduced to 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 in Japanese means geisha, and Huakui refers to the leading geisha, highlighting this bean's excellence.)

Later, DW Company added processing plants in Dimtu, the core production area of Hambella, namely "Buku Abel," "Buku Saysay," "Haro Soresa," and "Tirtiro Goye," with annual coffee output of about 1,100 tons. In terms of growing areas and processing plants, among all these estates and processing stations, only lots from the processing area of the "Buku Abel" 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 climate conditions differ each year, so coffee bean flavors also vary slightly. 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 made available to everyone.

Arsi Region

Arsi is also a coffee-producing area 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 region. The area's name comes from a branch of the Oromo people who have long lived there. West Arsi consists of three woredas (third-level administrative divisions in Ethiopia): Arsi, Bale, and East Shewa. About 88.52% of West Arsi's population is Oromo, which is significant in coffee history because they were the earliest 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. The average farm size per smallholder household is not large, about 2 to 3 hectares, but even so it is often slightly larger than the 1.5 to 2 hectares common in most of Ethiopia. Although current coffee cultivation techniques are still developing, compared with other regions, coffee farming techniques in West Arsi are developing very rapidly. Coffee farmers do not need to hire temporary or full-time workers, but instead sort coffee with the help of family members, allowing them to better control coffee quality. Processing stations usually also pay extra for fully ripe red cherries, greatly increasing farmers' motivation.

Huakui Coffee Bean Variety

Like most Ethiopian coffee beans, Huakui's variety belongs to Ethiopia's local native species, namely Heirloom. In Ethiopia, the garden planting system is the cultivation model on which the vast majority of small coffee farmers depend, and Heirloom native varieties come from the "unknown varieties" in their backyards. The coffee trees may have been left by a previous owner of the land, or obtained through sharing among neighbors, or possibly grown from seeds from another origin. Various coffee plants are mixed with other cash crops on the land, and only when ripe are they picked and sold.

Therefore, Heirloom does not refer to a specific coffee variety. It represents a green bean blend from the origin—coffee gathered from the same-period harvests of multiple smallholders and combined together. A single lot may contain dozens or even hundreds of unclassified varieties. Precisely because varieties differ and each mixing method is different, these coffees vary in bean size, dimensions, and shape—some large, some small, some long, some round—and can be understood as a "blended-type lot."

Coffee Bean Processing Methods

Sidamo coffee beans are processed in two ways: washed and natural. In the washed method, high-quality cherries are first selected, then after removing the skin and pulp, they enter a water tank for soaking and fermentation, after which they are dried to about 12% moisture content. The natural method is relatively simpler: the cherries are directly exposed to sunlight and dried to about 12% moisture content, then the skin and pulp are removed.

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

Front Street's brewing parameters for Sidamo coffee:

For coffee brewing, Front Street has always believed that the freshness of coffee beans has a crucial impact on flavor. Therefore, all coffee beans shipped by FrontStreet Coffee are within 5 days of the roast date. Front Street's roasting philosophy is "freshly roasted good coffee," so that every customer who places an order receives the coffee in its freshest state. Coffee's resting period is about 4 to 7 days, so when customers receive it, it is at its best flavor.

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

Use staged extraction. First, bloom with 2 times the coffee dose in water, that is, 30 grams of water for 30 seconds. The purpose of blooming is to let the coffee grounds release internal carbon dioxide, 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 all the water in the dripper has dripped through, remove the dripper. Start timing from the beginning of pouring; extraction time is 2 minutes 00 seconds. Next, swirl the entire cup of coffee to mix it evenly, 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 a nectarine flavor in the finish and a juicy mouthfeel. After cooling, it tastes even more like a cup of plum and nectarine juice.

[Natural Huakui 8.0 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's fruity sweetness and juiciness are slightly superior, especially when hot—the jam and honey flavors are irresistible—and after the temperature drops, the juicy quality becomes even more obvious and very comfortable.

Huakui 8.0 leans toward tropical fruit flavors, and the alternating rise and fall of sweetness and acidity is surprising. Compared with the two, Huakui has a stronger fermented character.

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