Ethiopia Kochere Coffee Beans

Back in 2017 we purchased this coffee, Kochere, because we believed it was the perfect example of what a top scoring washed Ethiopian coffee should be. We are very excited to finally purchase this coffee again, and this year's harvest is incredible. Let us tell you all about this coffee and what is special about it.

Kore is the village, or kebele, where this coffee is grown and processed, in the Kochere "district" or woreda within Yirgacheffe. Kore is about 25 kilometers from the center of Yirgacheffe Town. Kochere is southwest of the town of Yirgacheffe and near a little village of Ch'elelek'tu. Kochere coffees have a strong fruit tea-like note that comes along with the citrus and stone fruit. The coffee is picked and delivered to the Boji washing station, depulped within 12 hours, and washed using spring water. The soils in this region are red-brown clay soil, about 1.5 meters deep.

Coffees in Ethiopia are typically grown on very small plots of land by farmers who also grow other crops. The majority of smallholders will deliver their coffee in cherry to a nearby washing station or central processing unit, where their coffee will be sorted, weighed, and paid for or given a receipt. Coffee is then processed, usually washed or natural, by the washing station and dried on raised beds.

The washing stations serve as many as several hundred to sometimes a thousand or more producers, who deliver cherry throughout the harvest season: The blending of these cherries into day lots makes it virtually impossible under normal circumstances to know precisely whose coffee winds up in which bags on what day, making traceability to the producer difficult.

Nevertheless, coffee produced in this area always tends to be stunning. This coffee immediately struck us as wildly different simply because of the size of the beans.  When we receive a sample of coffee, the first step is to measure the moisture, volatility through water activity and lastly the density of beans by just taking a 5 gram sample and seeing how many beans it takes to equal these five grams.  This helps to give an indication to how long the development of the coffee should need to be in order to fully develop sugars and yet allow balance of pleasant acids in the cup.  

We roast this coffee incredibly fast with a lot of intense heat. This is to force out and highlight all the acidity this coffee has to offer. By doing this we get peach skin and limeade acidity, with apricot and white grape sweetness. It has a light and delicate mouthfeel. This is the coffee roasters coffee.