Etiopien Uraga Red Honey

This coffee gets its name from where the coffee is processed, The Lecho Washing Station (Abdi jIBRIL). It is named after its current site manager. The station handled coffee cherries from 409 farmers in the the past season. This micro lot is a Red Anaerobic Honey!

The coffee comes from Uraga in the Guji zone, which is considered to be the birthplace of coffee. Guji-zone lies in the Oromia region in Southern Ethiopia and used to be a sub-region of Sidamo but got its own status for a little more than 10 years ago. Being covered with forests, it is excellent for farming and has ideal conditions for growing Arabica-coffee: high altitude (over 1,500 m); rich, well-drained (mainly volcanic) soils that hardly require additional fertilizers; highland tropical climate with 1,500–2,500 mm of rainfall over nine months and optimum temperatures between 15 and 24°C. Over the past six decades, rapid commercial and cultural developments have elevated Guji into a unique coffee region.

The Uraga area is considered one of the highest in Ethiopia. It is a resource rich area with very fertile land, lots of coffee and a thriving mining business. Most of the coffee trees in the area are quite young and the varieties are usually 74410 & 74412. These two varieties have shown the most resistance to disease while still having a distinct coffee profile.

The farmers bring coffee cherries from an average area of 1-2 hectares of land that has been passed down from previous generations. For the 2024 season, in order to better focus on quality, Lecho decided to make only washed and honey coffee. The result was indeed successful as this fine anaerobic Honey shows.

FERMENTERINGSPROCESSEN

Ethiopia is not exactly known for being at the forefront of experimental processing methods, but this anaerobic honey lot shows that some washing stations are starting to succeed in producing very fine, textured and delicate coffees using new methods! After being hand-picked at peak ripeness and hand-sorted, the coffee cherries are peeled so that almost all the sugar is left on the pergamino skin. The coffee is then tightly packed in plastic barrels and left to ferment without oxygen for 96 hours. They are then laid out on raised beds to dry for up to 10 days.