How Did Guji Hambela Huakui Coffee Become a Name in Traditional Coffee?

Huakui comes from the Buku processing station in Hambela, Guji, Ethiopia, and is a natural-processed heirloom variety. It won Ethiopia's 2017 Taste of Harvest competition with strawberry and creamy aromas, and that same year Li Jianfei used it in the World Brewers Cup China region, finishing runner-up ahead of Geisha entries and bringing the bean wide recognition.

The name comes from Hambella, its producing area, with the Chinese name meaning chief of a hundred flowers. The beans grow in the three-tier production context of Sidamo, Guji and Hambela, and bright-acidity lots like this have shifted expectations in traditional coffee drinking. Roasters follow the natural process carefully to keep the citrus and berry notes intact.

In recent years, coffee with bright acidity has become increasingly popular, and Huakui is one of the most recognizable among them. It comes from the Buku processing station in Hambela, Guji region, Ethiopia. With its strawberry and creamy aroma, it won the 2017 TOH competition, and in the same year, Li Jianfei used it in the World Brewers Cup China region to defeat Geisha and win runner-up, skyrocketing to fame. This article will start with the story of Huakui's rise to fame, sort out the terroir context of the three-tier production areas of Sidamo, Guji, and Hambela, introduce the natural processing method of the Buku processing station and the background of the Heirloom native variety, and include product information for Front Street Coffee's new-season Huakui, two custom roasting curves, and the complete parameters and brewing steps for V60 pour-over, taking you through a comprehensive understanding of this coffee with its distinctive floral and fruity notes.

In recent years, coffee with bright acidity has gradually become popular, and many enthusiasts have surely heard of the bean called Huakui. Just the name makes it feel extraordinary. Its clear citrus and berry notes, plus its pleasant sweet-and-sour taste like fruit juice, make it hard to forget once you've tried it. Next, let's talk about this coffee, Huakui.

How Huakui Became Famous

In 2017, Ethiopia's DW company submitted a natural batch from the "Buku Abel" processing station. With its outstanding strawberry and creamy aroma, it won the Ethiopian national championship in that year's TOH (Ethiopia National Taste of Harvest competition). In the same year, at the World Brewers Cup China region competition, Li Jianfei from Beijing CREMA Coffee Training used this coffee to defeat the Geisha competing in the same event and won the national runner-up. Since then, Huakui has frequently appeared on the bean lists of various cafes.

In a later interview, Li Jianfei mentioned that he believed this Ethiopian bean's performance was enough to compete with Panama's Geisha, and he hoped it could become the top "geisha" among Ethiopian coffees, so he named it "Huakui." The chief of a hundred flowers, with a charming posture—this is the origin of the name. The English name of Huakui is taken from its production area, which is Hambella.

Guji Production Area

Sidamo is one of Ethiopia's important specialty coffee production areas, located in the southern part of the country, spanning the highland area on the south side of Lake Awasa in the East African Rift Valley, at an altitude of about 1,500 to 2,200 meters. The local temperature difference between day and night is significant, which lengthens the ripening cycle of coffee cherries, allowing them to accumulate more nutrients, thus giving the flavor rich layers of sweetness and acidity. In addition, the complex terrain, diverse soil types, and large microclimate differences make Sidamo's coffee flavors highly diverse.

Guji was initially managed under the Sidamo production area. Due to its remote location and relatively lagging development, Guji coffee became famous later, and its early reputation was not as good as production areas such as Yirgacheffe and Harrar. Later, because of the outstanding flavor of its beans, it was separated out as a new production area. It has fertile black soil, with an average altitude above 1,800 meters, and its unique geographical conditions create a terroir very suitable for coffee tree growth.

Hambela Production Area

Hambela is a sub-production area under Guji, with currently about 20 green bean processing stations of varying sizes. Huakui comes from the Buku processing station in Guji. Hambela itself is a coffee farm belonging to the locally renowned METAD Agricultural Development PLC. It is both an independent farm and also serves as the main processing station for surrounding cultivation areas, uniformly processing coffee produced nearby and then selling it externally as independent lots.

As a local Ethiopian coffee export enterprise, METAD was founded by Aman Adinew in 2013. Its coffee raw materials come from the Gedeo Zone and Gedeb District in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (SNNPR), as well as the Guji Zone and Hambela Estate in the Oromia Region.

Aman comes from a coffee family. His grandmother opened up coffee farms in the Harrar and Sidamo areas of Ethiopia in the last century, and he himself also served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). After leaving public office, in order to promote the modernization of the local coffee industry, he founded METAD and cooperated with thousands of smallholder farmers in Yirgacheffe and Guji.

Hambela Farm has a total area of 200 hectares and is about 75 kilometers from Yirgacheffe, situated in Ethiopia's core zone of the finest coffee. Its processing station is quite mature in equipment, management, and scale. In addition, fertile volcanic soil, natural organic cultivation methods, and relatively advanced post-processing—these factors together have contributed to this place becoming one of the most popular sub-production areas in recent years.

Natural Processing

During the harvest season from December to January each year, the Buku processing station only picks fully red cherries, selecting coffee cherries with a sugar content of 30 or above, and places them on African raised beds to dry. The local temperature difference between day and night is extreme, so coffee farmers provide shade at noon to avoid excessive fermentation caused by high temperatures; at night, to prevent sudden rain, they cover them with plastic sheets. They constantly turn them throughout the day and control the thickness of the fruit layer to make drying more even, while avoiding sunburn or unpleasant fermentation flavors. After about 18 days of sun drying, when the moisture content of the green beans drops to 13%, they can be bagged and stored.

Coffee Variety

Many people ask: "What exactly is the Heirloom native variety?" Ethiopia has an extremely large number of varieties, making it a natural gene pool for Arabica. The varieties are numerous and difficult to identify and classify. In addition, the local government does not disclose variety information in order to protect resources, so they are collectively called Heirloom native varieties. This is also why Ethiopian native coffee beans vary in size and shape.

Front Street Coffee. Ethiopia New-Season Huakui

Production Area: Guji Hambela

Processing Station: Buku abel

Altitude: 2250-2350m

Variety: Local native variety

Processing Method: Natural processing

Considering that Front Street Huakui has full floral aromas and prominent tropical fruit notes, we designed two roasting curves for it. One corresponds to a medium-light roast Huakui suitable for pour-over, cold brew, and other methods, with rich strawberry, citrus, and guava flavors, as well as a comfortable black tea finish;

The other is Front Street Huakui SOE suitable for moka pot and espresso, using a medium roast. The extracted espresso is full of berry aroma, with clear sweetness of blueberry, mango, and honey. Made into milk coffee, it is silky and fragrant, with none of the bitterness of traditional coffee.

Because high-altitude hard beans absorb water more slowly after grinding, Front Street Coffee chooses a medium-fine grind size, combined with a higher water temperature and V60 dripper, to better highlight the layered floral and fruity notes.

Dripper: V60

Water Temperature: 92°C

Grind Size: 80% pass rate with No. 20 standard sieve

Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15

Coffee Dose: 15 grams

The ground Huakui coffee powder has a honey-like sweet fragrance. Pour the coffee powder into the V60 dripper, wet the coffee bed with twice the amount of water as the coffee dose, and let it bloom for 30 seconds. Then, with a small stream, pour in circles from the inside outward until 125 grams, then pause in stages; when the coffee bed drops to half the height of the dripper, continue pouring the third stage with the same fine stream until 225 grams. After all the coffee liquid has filtered through, remove the dripper. The total time is about 2 minutes (with a margin of about 10 seconds).

On the palate, there is the rich sweetness of tropical fruits such as passion fruit and mango, accompanied by the acidity of berries and citrus. The mouthfeel is creamy and smooth, and a black tea-like finish lingers in the mouth for a long time.

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