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caffeinated?Archive for ethiopia
Ethiopian Coffee Export Clusterfuck
Kenya’s notorious for it’s coffee export infrastructure. The government-regulated grading and auctioning have been accused of numbers of injustices towards the farmers it’s supposed to benefit. Recently, a so-called Second Window opened for growers to allow them to sell directly to brokers and green-coffee buyers. Intelli’s Thunguri & Ndaroini lots from the past season were among the first coffees purchased under the new legislation.
Recently, Ethiopian governmental officials enacted legislation to block farmers from doing this, representing a change of philosophy in the traditionally more open market. While small farmers may not yet be at risk, and smaller export groups and buyers can still find producers who will sell their beans, a number of large farms are being forced into a large pool where homogenization on massive scales will “brand” coffees by their region (presumably for marketability to large buyers like Starbucks). This has caused major geek-freak-outs amongst the specialty community, who are generally concerned about the preservation of some of the most unique and recognizable representations of innate indigenous diversity.
Better explanations of the situation can be found in this discussion on coffeed.
‘Bout Time
I’m back.
Still loving our Yirgacheffe. Almost a year since it was harvested and it’s still holding on to its incredible flavor… Kenya’s keeping it real as well.
One of the things I love about the coffees from these two producing countries is that they are two of the most exciting and recognizable yet wholly unique from each other.
Kenyan beans, at least the good ones, originate from cultivars of coffea arabica developed in laboratories and bear aliases like “sl28 ” and “ruiru 11.” Larger and rounder than their distant relatives in Ethiopia like the smallish longberry typica
Photo: Tom Owen, Sweet Maria's Coffee
varietal typically grown in the regions of Yirgacheffe & Sidamo
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Kenyan coffees distinctive flavor characteristics usually include a wine-like acidity, red currant or grapefruit flavors, and hints of spices like clove. Ethiopian coffees, particularly the fully washed typicas from Yirgacheffe tend towards more lemon-berry tea-like flavors, usually the best with especially fragrant floral notes. These beans, from the same region in the world from whence the coffee plant first grew in the wild, maintain elements of the coffee fruit flavor so innate to the origin of all coffees, representing an au natural counterpart to its synthetic Kenyan cousin. Yet they both produce the most coveted coffees in the world.
