Why do most Ethiopian coffee beans have different shapes? Introduction to Santa Vini 74158 Coffee in Sidamo Region

Ethiopia is the birthplace of the most well-known Arabica coffee species and the largest coffee exporter in Africa. The coffee it produces is popular among many coffee lovers for its unique floral and citrus flavors. There are also a variety of shelves on the front street. However, when you often buy Ethiopian coffee, you will find out why Ethiopian coffee beans always have different sizes and shapes? Is it bad quality?

No, it is because there are many varieties of coffee grown in Ethiopia, with more than 10,000 coffee varieties, but most of them are not identified and subdivided. Different coffee varieties will produce different fruits and coffee beans after planting, so there will be different sizes.

In Ethiopia, there are mainly three methods: garden planting, manor planting and forest planting. Among them, garden planting is the most common, and more than half of Ethiopian coffee is produced in this way. Cannon coffee trees are grown in their backyards or mixed with other crops in the farmland, with an area of less than 4 hectares per household. During the harvest season, after harvesting, farmers are handed over to nearby processing stations or cooperatives for processing and export.

In addition, Ethiopia also has forest planting methods. This method is mainly found in the Kaffa Zone in the southwest, which is the first place where coffee was discovered. There are still countless wild Arabica coffee mother trees planted in the Kaffa forest. In this area, it can be said to be the richest gene bank of Arabica coffee varieties. About 30 coffee production cooperatives have been established around this Kafa Forest. When the coffee is ripe, farmers will enter the forest to collect coffee fruits and sell or export them during processing.

In the garden planting method, many coffee farmers have difficulty identifying and separating coffee varieties, and the coffee trees they grow may have been left by the owner of the land or shared by neighbors. At the coffee maturity period, the processing plant collects coffee fruits from the hands of multiple coffee farmers and pieces them together into one batch, which may contain multiple coffee varieties that have not yet been refined. Therefore, the size and shape of these coffee beans are different. Different sizes can be said to be a "blended batch."

Similarly, the forest pattern is similar. Because there are multiple unidentified coffee varieties in the forest, it is also difficult for farmers to identify them when harvesting. Therefore, such mixed coffee varieties will be labeled as "Heirloom," which is called native species or heirloom in Chinese.

In addition, due to the uneven size of such coffee beans, Ethiopia adopts coffee classification based on the size of raw beans as in other countries, but only considers the flaw rate of coffee beans. This allows even the highest grade of coffee beans to be classified under this system, which is the biggest difference in appearance from other coffee producing areas.

According to the latest Ethiopian coffee grading system formulated by the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), 300g of coffee beans will be sampled and comprehensively rated according to the number of defects and cup test scores. They will be divided into G1-G5 and Grade UG (among which the UG grades include two types: P with sheepskin layer and NP without sheepskin layer). Even if Ethiopia's coffee beans have different shapes and uneven sizes, it will not affect the quality of its coffee.

In addition, in addition to growing regional varieties, Ethiopia also grows JARC varieties, which are developed by the Jimma Agricultural Research Center, one of the Ethiopian Agricultural Federal Research Centers, to improve resistance to pests and diseases and increase yields. Between 1973 and 1975, the research center collected a total of 639 different coffee varieties in 15 regions for identification and planting experiments. In the end, 13 beans performed well, having the characteristics of disease resistance, high yield and drought tolerance, and have good flavor performance.

The center classifies these beans into "1974/1975 CBD-Rextant Selections", which is the more well-known number series in recent years. The currently common 74110, 74158, and 74112 belong to this series. The front "74 and 75" represent the year of discovery, and the last three digits are the variety number.

In Qianjie Coffee, there is a Qianjie Sidamo Santa Vini coffee bean from the Sidamo producing area and produced by DWD's Santa Vini processing station. It uses 74158 coffee variety and is treated with anaerobic sun for 96 hours. After brewing, the coffee flavor has a slight fermented aroma, citrus and berry tropical fruit flavor, mellow taste and red wine aftertaste.

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