How Does Hualing Coffee Compare With Geisha on Price?

Hualing is a sun-dried bean from Hambela in Ethiopia's Guji region, not a place or variety name. It gained attention after winning the 2017 TOH championship. Its rich floral and fruity aroma and comparatively accessible price have made it a daily choice for many drinkers, and it is often compared with Geisha and Blue Mountain on price positioning rather than on origin.

Ethiopian coffees are typically named by region, such as Sidamo, Yirgacheffe, and Kaffa Forest, so Hualing breaks that convention. Sidamo lies on the fertile plateau south of Lake Awasa in the East African Rift Valley, at 1,500 to 2,200 meters, with abundant rainfall and mild climate. Slow cherry maturation at altitude helps accumulate flavor compounds, giving Sidamo bright citrus acidity and a smooth black tea mouthfeel.

Geisha coffee is not a name of a region or a variety, but a sun-dried bean originating from Hambela in the Guji region of Ethiopia. It rose to fame after winning the TOH championship in 2017, and with its rich floral and fruity aroma and affordable price, it has become the daily go-to choice for many coffee lovers. This article starts with the background of the Sidamo region, sorts out the origin of Geisha, the traceability of the processing plant, the characteristics of the variety, and brewing suggestions, and compares it with the price positioning of Geisha and Blue Mountain, helping readers fully understand this "queen of a hundred flowers."

Coffee from Ethiopia is usually identified by place names, such as Front Street Sidamo, Front Street Yirgacheffe, and Front Street Kaffa Forest, all named after coffee-growing regions. However, one bean breaks this convention—it is called "Geisha coffee," which is neither a region name nor a variety name. So what exactly is it? Let us start with the Sidamo region.

Sidamo is located on the fertile plateau south of Lake Awasa in the East African Rift Valley, where rainfall is abundant and the climate is mild, with an altitude range of 1,500 to 2,200 meters, making it an ideal area for growing coffee. High altitude combined with moderate shade cultivation allows coffee cherries to mature slowly in a cool environment, thereby accumulating more nutrients and converting them into flavor components. Sidamo is as famous as Yirgacheffe, and both are among the most representative specialty coffee regions in Ethiopia. The most prominent characteristic of Sidamo coffee is its bright citrus acidity and smooth black tea mouthfeel, and its overall flavor has a fuller tropical fruit profile than Yirgacheffe.

Like other regions in Ethiopia, coffee cultivation in Sidamo is dominated by smallholder farmers, and production is relatively limited. Many coffee cooperatives and processing plants are distributed across local towns and villages, undertaking the raw bean processing tasks of the region. Every year when the coffee cherries mature, surrounding farmers send the harvested coffee cherries to processing plants (cooperatives) near water sources for centralized processing, and finally sell them externally under the name of the processing plant. In recent years, with the advancement of the specialty coffee wave, many producers have begun to purchase directly from farmers, strengthening the management and traceability of micro-lots, further improving coffee quality and bringing forth more finely processed micro-lots.

Historically, Sidamo was the name of an old province in Ethiopia before the administrative division adjustment in 1995. The Sidama people settled in southern Ethiopia as early as the 9th century AD and have their own culture, religion, and language. At the end of the 19th century, Emperor Menelik II of the Ethiopian Empire invaded, and after defeat, Sidama was incorporated into the Ethiopian Empire. The name Sidamo was exactly the new designation given to the Sidama people by the imperial rulers, and therefore carries a certain derogatory connotation.

After 1995, Ethiopia implemented a federal system of administration, and at the same time, in order to respect the cultures of various ethnic groups within the country, the government redrew administrative regions according to the residential areas and languages of major ethnic groups. Sidama was assigned to the new Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region, and the area also restored its historical original name: Sidama.

However, before the administrative redrawing, Sidamo Coffee had already become world-renowned for its unique aroma, so compared with "Sidama," people are more accustomed to calling it Sidamo. In addition, when the Ethiopian government protected the coffee of this region through trademark registration, it also chose the old name Sidamo® as the registered trademark for Sidama coffee. To this day, domestic consumers, like Front Street, are still used to calling the coffee here "Sidamo."

From 2010 to 2012, Sidamo coffee continuously received high scores of 92 to 94 on the authoritative American coffee evaluation website CR, which sufficiently shows the extraordinary quality of raw beans from this region. The coffee flavor of Sidamo is extremely diverse. Different soil types, microclimates, and countless native coffee varieties, together with the towering mountains, highlands, plateaus, valleys, and plains within the region, create rich and varied terrain. The geology of this area belongs to fertile volcanic soil with good drainage, with a soil layer nearly two meters deep, and the topsoil is dark brown or brown. Its greatest advantage lies in maintaining soil fertility through the cycling of organic matter, using fallen leaves from surrounding trees or residual plant roots as natural fertilizer.

Because Ethiopia has significant changes in terrain and altitude, along with various variants and as-yet-unclassified native species, the differences among producing regions are enormous. The cup profile of coffee from each producing region, micro-region, or even farm is different. This leads coffee buyers to prefer judging Ethiopian coffee by producing region, altitude, and cupping score when purchasing, rather than distinguishing it by variety. For this reason, Front Street has acquired more than ten Ethiopian single-origin coffees, mainly concentrated in the Yirgacheffe and Sidamo producing regions.

Guji Region — Hambela — Geisha Coffee

In China, when mentioning the representative category of Sidamo coffee, everyone will definitely think of sun-dried Hambela — Geisha coffee. It not only has a rich floral and fruity aroma, but is also suitable for various extraction methods, such as pour-over, cold brew, moka pot, and more, while also being very affordable. Therefore, compared with coffees like Blue Mountain and Geisha, many people will first choose Geisha coffee as their daily go-to bean.

Geisha refers to a sun-dried coffee bean from the Hambela region of Ethiopia, with the full English name "Ethiopia Guji Hambella Buku Abel." Broadly speaking, it is a champion bean from Guji, Ethiopia; more specifically, it is a sun-dried lot processed and produced by the smaller Buku Abel processing plant in Hambela.

Hambela is located at the border between the Sidamo and Guji producing regions and is managed under the Guji producing region. It is adjacent across the mountains to Kochere in Yirgacheffe, separated by a highland about 30 kilometers wide at an altitude of 3,200 meters. It borders the Guji sub-regions of Shakiso, Uraga, and Kercha to the southeast, south, and north respectively, and is the highest-altitude coffee sub-region in Ethiopia.

This coffee bean, Geisha, was submitted by DW Company in 2017 to that year's TOH (Ethiopia National Taste of Harvest competition) and won the championship, thereby making its debut. Geisha is called Hambella in English, which is also the name of the Hambela place of origin. In the same year, this batch of coffee beans was noticed by a trading company in Beijing. Precisely because of its champion status, it was named "Geisha" and introduced to the domestic market, implying "the queen of a hundred flowers, outshining all others." As its popularity continued to rise, this traditional sun-dried bean from the Buku Abel processing plant successfully "debuted," and with its affordable price and pleasant flavor, it quickly became a high-quality Ethiopian coffee widely recognized within the industry.

Every year during the coffee harvest season (December to January), the Buku processing plant organizes farmers to pick fully red coffee cherries, and the brix value must reach above 30. The selected coffee cherries are placed on African raised beds to dry. Because the local temperature difference between day and night is extreme, coffee farmers shade the sun at noon to avoid excessive fermentation caused by too high a temperature; at night, to prevent sudden rain, they cover them with plastic sheets. They turn them continuously throughout the day and must also ensure the coffee cherries are not piled too thickly, so that the fruit dries evenly while preventing sunburn or unpleasant fermentation flavors. After about 18 days of sun-drying, when the moisture content of the green coffee beans drops to 13%, the husks can be removed by machine.

What does Geisha X.0 mean?

At present, there are nearly 20 processing plants of various scales in the Hambela producing region. 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 sun-dried lot from the "Buku Abel" processing plant won the TOH Ethiopia championship with its strong strawberry and cream aroma.

That year, the green beans of this lot were introduced into China by Beijing green bean trader Hongshun, and in the same year Li Jianfei used these beans 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 "Geisha." (Geisha in Japanese means geisha, while oiran means the leading courtesan among geisha, used here to indicate the outstanding quality of this bean.)

Subsequently, DW Company added processing plants in Dimtu, the core producing area of Hambella, namely "Buku Abel," "Buku Saysay," "Haro Soresa," and "Tirtiro Goye," with an annual coffee output of about 1,100 tons. If we consider the growing regions and processing plants, among all these estates and processing sites, only those within the processing area of the "Buku Abel" processing plant cover the small place of origin that originally produced the sun-dried coffee bean "Geisha." In other words: only coffee beans produced by Buku Abel and processed by the sun-dried method can truly be called "Geisha."

The place where Geisha is grown is at an altitude of more than 2,000 meters, and the coffee trees are surrounded by tropical plants such as sugarcane and bananas, providing appropriate shade for the coffee trees. Coffee is also a kind of agricultural crop and is naturally directly related to the climate and environment, so the flavor still varies somewhat from year to year. The naming method of Geisha X.0 is based on the year: Geisha 2.0 was launched in 2018, Geisha 3.0 and 3.1 in 2019, Geisha 4.0 in 2020, Geisha 5.0 in 2021, and Geisha 6.0 in 2022. By 2024, it is naturally Geisha 8.0.

The Coffee Variety of Geisha

As the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia possesses an enormous number of coffee varieties. Whether known or unknown, Ethiopia can be called a treasure trove of varieties, and many varieties have yet to be discovered. Of course, for the purpose of keeping species genetic information confidential, the Ethiopian government collectively calls local varieties native species. Therefore, the variety of Geisha is also a local native species.

In Ethiopia, the garden planting system is the model on which the vast majority of small coffee farmers depend for their livelihood, and Heirloom native species 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, and may also have been cultivated from seeds from another producing area. Various coffee plants are intercropped with other cash crops on the land, and only when they mature are they picked and sold.

Therefore, Heirloom does not refer to a certain type of coffee variety. It represents a blend of green beans from the place of origin. The coffee gathers the harvests of multiple smallholder farmers from the same period and is then "assembled" together. A single lot may contain dozens or even hundreds of varieties that have not been finely classified. Precisely because there are differences among varieties and the blending method is different each time, these coffees differ in bean particle size, dimensions, and shape—some large, some small, some long, some round—and can be understood as a "blended-type lot."

Processing Methods of Sidamo Coffee Beans

The processing method of Yirgacheffe coffee is washed, but in fact the traditional processing method of Yirgacheffe is natural. At present, naturally processed coffee beans in Ethiopia account for more than 70%. The coffee beans from the Sidamo coffee producing region are mainly natural.

The natural processing method is one of the oldest and most classic processing methods, and its steps are simpler than other processing methods: dry the coffee cherries in the sun, with the drying time lasting as long as several weeks. When the moisture content of the coffee drops to about 11%, the skin, pulp, and other parts of the coffee cherries can be removed together by machine, and then the coffee is stored in warehouses waiting for export.

Sidamo green coffee beans are slightly gray, coarse in some places and fine in others, with both soft and intense acidity, moderate body, and a sweet and spicy aroma. It is one of the garden coffees of the southern highlands of Ethiopia. What makes it different from ordinary African coffee is that Sidamo has clear fruit acidity, a smooth mouthfeel, and a delicate floral and herbal aroma.

Front Street's parameters for brewing sun-dried Geisha coffee:

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

Use staged extraction, blooming with twice the amount of water as the coffee powder, that is, 30 grams of water for 30 seconds. The reason blooming is needed is to allow the coffee powder to release internal carbon dioxide, 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 dripped through, remove the dripper. Start timing from the beginning of pouring, and the extraction time is 2'00". Next, swirl the entire cup of coffee to mix it evenly, then pour it into a cup and taste.

[Sun-Dried Geisha 8.0 Coffee Flavor] The floral and fruity aroma is very obvious—citrus, passion fruit, strawberry, oolong tea—with a very high sweetness.

Front Street's coffee brewing suggestions:

The above is an introduction to coffee's three major original varieties. No matter what kind of coffee is brewed, Front Street has always believed that the freshness of coffee beans has a great relationship with the flavor of the coffee. Therefore, the coffee beans shipped by FrontStreet Coffee are all within 5 days of the roasting date. Front Street's roasting philosophy is "freshly roasted good coffee," so that every customer who places an order receives the freshest coffee when it arrives. The resting period for coffee is about 4-7 days, so when customers receive it, it is exactly at its best flavor.

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