I believe that for people who like to drink coffee, there will always be African coffee beans in the coffee they drink. Among them, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee beans, which are produced in the place where Arabica originated, are famous for their good flavor and are loved by people. In recent years, domestic specialty coffee has developed rapidly. What is the variety, origin and flavor of this coffee bean, which is very famous in the international coffee circle?
It is reported that on January 5, 2021, Luckin Coffee signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with its partners on the procurement of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe specialty coffee beans. According to the agreement, Luckin Coffee plans to purchase a total of 1,000 to 2,000 tons of specialty coffee beans in the Yirgacheffe producing area of Ethiopia every year from 2021 to 2023. This agreement may lead to the largest purchase order of specialty coffee from a Chinese company in Ethiopia.
Front Street Coffee focuses on two key words, one is "fine coffee beans", which means that the quality of coffee beans must reachSCASystem80points or more (80The following points belong to the commercial bean level), followed by "Yirgacheffe". As the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia is an important economic crop. Coffee beans are grown and produced in many places across the country, and Yirgacheffe is only one of the smallest producing areas, but it can provide more than a thousand tons of output and excellent quality.80For specialty coffee beans rated above, one can imagine the potential of Yirgacheffe and the high quality of the coffee beans in this production area.
Years ago, Yirgacheffe has become a coffee-producing region that coffee lovers cannot avoid. Most independent cafes offer Pour over(V60) coffee from the Yirgacheffe region. Even now, Yirgacheffe is deeply loved by gourmets. Front Street Coffee also loves the Yirgacheffe production area, so today we will review and share the uniqueness and charm of Yirgacheffe.
Yirgacheffe
Yirgacheffe
Yirgacheffe "Yirgacheffe" is a small town in Ethiopia with an altitude of 1,700 to 2,100 meters. It can be said to be synonymous with Ethiopian specialty coffee. It has been a wetland since ancient times. In ancient language, "yirga" means "settling down" and "cheffe" means "wetland". Therefore, Yirgacheffe means "settle down in this wetland".
Originally, Yirgacheffe was a by-product area of Sidamo Province in Ethiopia. It is located to the northwest of Sidamo and is one of the highest coffee-producing areas in Ethiopia. Because the production methods and flavor here are so outstanding, Ethiopian coffee farmers are proud of their Yirgacheffe flavor. Therefore, it became independent from the Sidamo production area and became the most famous production area in Africa. (In the future, there will be more and more independent production areas that are flavor-oriented) .
Subsequently, Ethiopia changed the division of administrative regions around 1995. The biggest impact on the coffee region was that the original Sidamo was divided into the new Sidamo (a minority of the original), and most of it was included in Oromia. Yirgacheffe, which originally belonged to Sidamo Province, is now included in the new Gedeo region.
The Ethiopian coffee items currently circulating on the market will be mixed with new and old regional names. Here we use the new regional division as the benchmark.
Initially, the coffee trees in Yirgacheffe were planted by European monasteries, and later by farmers or cooperatives.
Most of the coffee cultivation in Yirgacheffe belongs to the pastoral coffee model, that is, coffee farmers plant coffee trees near their living areas, harvest them by themselves during the harvest season, and then send them to nearby treatment plants built on water sources for unified processing (or unified purchase by middlemen).
Except for a small number of relatively powerful planting estates that independently grow, pick, and process green coffee beans, coffee beans from many different regions and varieties are centrally processed by processing plants and then sent to auction houses for official evaluation and grading.
This is also the reason why many Yirgacheffe coffee beans are named after processing plants or cooperatives. For example, Yirgacheffe Dingding comes from one of the Dingding Cooperatives.
Yirgacheffe variety
Heirloom
The coffee variety guides the power of the final taste of the coffee. Geisha mostly has a floral base, and bourbon has a nutty citrus base.SL28&SL34It is a berry type, and the flavor of Yirgacheffe also comes from the coffee varieties grown in it. You will find that Ethiopia mostly uses native species, heirlooms (Heirloom) to fill in the name of the variety. At the same time, most of the Ethiopian coffee beans that have not been manually selected have obviously different sizes. Why is this phenomenon?
As the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia has an unimaginable number of coffee varieties. These complex varieties are mixed and planted, and the mixed processing of the cooperative model mentioned in the previous article makes it more difficult to trace the varieties. Therefore, "native varieties" are used to generalize and collectively refer to unrecognizable coffee varieties.
Ethiopian varieties can be roughly divided into landrace varieties and research varieties released by the Jimma Agricultural Research Center (JARC).
Both 74110 and 74158 are research varieties released by JARC. In the 1970s, the rampant coffee cherry disease (CBD) in Ethiopia caused a significant reduction in Ethiopian coffee production. In order to find natural disease-resistant gene varieties, JARC collected 639 sample varieties from 1973 to 1975, and finally selected 13 disease-resistant varieties, including 74110 and 74158, and 74 was the year they were collected.
Taste of Yirgacheffe
Flavor
Originally, the taste of the Yirgacheffe production area refers to the washed native species, which are fermented in water for 18 to 36 hours to remove the pectin and then left to dry for 2 to 3 weeks. The Yirgacheffe coffee processed in this way is reminiscent of floral aromas, citrus, berries, etc. Among them, Front Street Coffee chooses diced fruit as the representative of washed Yirgacheffe.
Yirgacheffe's Tintin Cooperative is located in the Woka production area at the southeastern end of Yirgacheffe. It was originally part of the Woka cooperative under the Yirgacheffe Union YCFCU. Later, more and more people paid attention to the origin of coffee beans, and each unique small production area was discovered one by one by coffee hunters around the world.
In 2012, Guodingding, which has about 300 members, became independent from Woka Cooperative and established Guodingding Cooperative. Guodingding Village was the first village area to be independent. Many small farmers were also members of the original Woka Cooperative, so the technology for coffee production was not a problem.
This washed Yirgacheffe produced by Guodingding Cooperative has citrus and black tea in the mouth. As the temperature changes, it has cream, caramel, and almond aftertaste, with a clear sweet aftertaste and a clean and sweet taste.
In addition to washing, the quality of sun-dried Yirgacheffe coffee is also gradually improving. The uncleanness caused by the rough processing process of sun-drying in the old days is also slowly improving. For example, there is a red cherry planned sun-dried Yirgacheffe in Front Street Coffee.
As its name suggests, the Red Cherry Project requires coffee farmers to harvest only fully red coffee cherries, eliminating immature fruits and overripe fruits, thereby reducing defects in the taste of coffee.
Harvesting all red fruits plus more detailed sun-drying treatment makes this sun-dried Yirgacheffe coffee smell like ripe fruits, with obvious fermentation aroma and green grapes in the mouth. When the temperature drops slightly, it has the acidity of lemon, the smoothness of cream, and the juice feeling of ripe grapes at the end.
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
