How Does the Green Coffee Bean Process Shape Sidamo Hambela Flavor?

Sidama Hambela coffee from the Buku Abel station shows bergamot tea notes, caramel sweetness, and vivid fruit aromas such as creamy strawberry, mango, jackfruit, citrus, and blueberry. The green coffee bean process is central to that profile: fully red cherries are picked, sorted, and dried on African raised beds to build the fermented, layered fruit character.

At Buku Abel, harvest runs from December to January, and cherries must reach a sugar content of 30 or above before drying. Farmers shade the beans at midday to limit excessive fermentation and cover them with plastic sheets at night against rain, turning them continuously. That handling is the core of the coffee bean processing behind the tea-like sweetness.

The Sidama Hambela region has attracted much attention from coffee lovers for its unique flavor profile, and coffees with bergamot tea notes and caramel sweetness are especially captivating. This article will provide an in-depth analysis of the flavor characteristics, mouthfeel layers, and the Buku Abel processing station's natural process behind Front Street Coffee's Huakui coffee, taking you from estate picking standards to brewing parameter suggestions for a comprehensive understanding of this star coffee that won the TOH green bean competition. Whether you are a coffee enthusiast who prefers floral and fruity tea-like notes, or a taster who wants to explore the secrets of natural processing, you can gain practical knowledge and brewing inspiration from it.

If you prefer coffee with bergamot tea notes, you might want to try Front Street Coffee's Sidama Huakui; it is enough to make you immerse yourself in a world of floral, fruity, and tea-like flavors, unforgettable for a long time.

Although the floral notes of Front Street Coffee's Huakui coffee are not exactly intense and showy, its fruit aromas are especially vivid, with pleasant flavors such as creamy strawberry, mango, jackfruit, citrus, and blueberry. What follows after drinking is a tea-like sweetness and a clean, light sweetness, leaving only a faint trace of floral aroma. This coffee has the slight fermented character typical of Sidama natural beans, with rich layers of tropical fruit flavors that leave a deep impression. It is precisely this rich berry fragrance that helped "Huakui" win the championship in that year's TOH green bean competition.

The reason Front Street Coffee's Huakui coffee can have such an outstanding flavor performance is largely due to the natural processing method.

Every year during the Huakui coffee harvest season (December to January of the following year), the Buku Abel processing station arranges for farmers to pick fully red coffee cherries, which must reach a sugar content value of 30 or above. After screening, the fruit is placed on African raised beds to dry. The local temperature difference between day and night is extreme, so coffee farmers shade the beans at noon to avoid excessive fermentation caused by overly high temperatures; at night, they cover them with plastic sheets to prevent sudden rainstorms. They turn them continuously throughout the day to ensure the fruit dries evenly while avoiding sunburn or unpleasant fermented flavors. After about 18 days of natural processing, the moisture content of the green coffee beans drops to around 13%, and then they can be hulled by machine.

To fully experience Huakui's rich aroma, Front Street Coffee recommends brewing with freshly roasted coffee beans to preserve the aromatic compounds to a greater extent. The Front Street Coffee Huakui coffee beans we sell are all freshly roasted within 5 days, and with shipping time, by the time customers receive them they are exactly in their best tasting period and can be brewed and enjoyed directly.

To extract the aroma of high-altitude coffee beans, Front Street chooses a higher water temperature so that aromatic substances are released more fully, while also being careful to avoid over-extraction. The recommended brewing parameters are as follows:

Dripper: V60

Water temperature: 92–93°C

Grind size: fine granulated sugar (80% passing rate with a No. 20 standard sieve)

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15

Coffee dose: 15 grams

Three-stage pouring: First, wet the coffee bed with twice the amount of water as the coffee grounds, and after a dome forms, let it bloom for 30 seconds. Then, pour in a slow circular motion from the inside outward until the scale reaches 125 grams, pause, and wait for the coffee bed to drop to half the height of the dripper. Continue pouring the third stage with the same thin stream until 225 grams, then wait until all the coffee liquid has finished filtering and remove the dripper. The total time is about 2 minutes.

After grinding Front Street Coffee's naturally processed Huakui coffee, you can smell rich tropical fruit aromas and honey-like sweetness. On the palate, there is abundant berry sweetness, accompanied by complex aromas such as passion fruit, with an obvious black tea mouthfeel and a long finish that is endlessly memorable.

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