Ethiopian Guji

Ethiopia’s Guji zone is a distant and heavily forested swath of land stretching southeast through the lower corner of the massive Oromia region. Coffee farms in many parts of Guji begin at 2000 meters in elevation and tend to climb from there. The natural fermentation process creates bright and exciting fruit tones.

Coffee cherries are received at all times of day during the long harvest season. These are sorted for ripeness and consistency before being moved directly to raised drying tables, where they are spread in a single layer to dry in the sun. The full drying process normally takes 3-6 weeks depending on the local climate at the time, and the final resting moisture content of the fruit is 11.5%.

Once cherries have been thoroughly dried and rested, the dried fruit is hulled from the coffee seed in local mills, and then transferred to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. In Addis the coffee is dry-milled by exporters who use modern color sorting equipment and often fleets of trained workers who repeatedly hand-sort the coffee to the correct grade for export.