Yirgacheffe Harusuke (Washed) - Ethiopia

In southern Ethiopia, within the Gedeo zone, lies the village of Haru, where the waters of the Goto River nourish the coffee cultivation. Here, 2820 smallholder farmers cultivated coffee in their backyards and delivered their harvest to the Harusuke washing station. Owned by Abreham Mengiste, the Harusuke washing station was established in 2017. Coffee grown in Ethiopia is naturally organic, as landrace varieties harmonise with the environment, providing organic fertiliser and natural pest control. This particular variety is well known for its small bean size. Luckily, in this case, good things come in small packages! Elevated acidity and dense complex fruits are well known attributes of the variety and growing altitude that should be embraced and not feared!  During harvest, only red cherries are hand-picked. The coffee is depulped within 8 to 12 hours of being harvested and is transferred to fermentation tanks. There, floats are removed before the coffee is left to ferment for 48 to 72 hours. Following fermentation, the coffee is washed to remove the mucilage and placed in a drying tank for 12 hours before moving to African drying beds. The drying process takes 8 to 10 days, with hand-picking and rotation to ensure uniform drying. Supervisors oversee the operations to maintain quality. Once the coffee’s moisture content reaches 10 to 12%, it is moved to a warehouse in Addis Ababa. The cleaning process starts with pre-cleaning to remove foreign materials, followed by hulling and polishing to remove the parchment and silver skin. The coffee is then sorted by screen size and density, with defects separated using colour sorters before being bagged in Grainpro for export. Local coffees have received the 2018 African Fine Coffees Association’s Taste of Harvest award. This coffee is sourced from our partner, Primrose Coffee, a vertically integrated company with 20 years of experience in Ethiopian green coffee exports and a proud member of the Ethiopian Chapter of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance.