A brief introduction to the cultivation of Ethiopian boutique coffee beans with multi-level taste, geographical location, climate and altitude

Even the official research unit of Ethiopia does not know how many Arabica subspecies there are in Ethiopia. The coffee cooperatives in this mountain are certainly different from those planted in another mountain, and even small farmers in the same region grow different varieties of coffee.

Like the little Jasper of Suzhou, although she is petite, she is gentle and delicate, sweet and lovely, and can attract thousands of favorites without any decoration. Medium-roasted Yega snow coffee has unique lemon, floral and honey sweet aromas, soft acidity and citrus flavors, fresh and bright on the palate.

Although the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee is petite, it is gentle and delicate and sweet. As the hometown of coffee, thousands of years of planting history and processing tradition in Ethiopia have created high-quality washed Arabica beans. Light baking has unique sweet aromas of lemon, flowers and honey, soft acidity and citrus flavors, fresh and bright on the palate. No milk or sugar, let the rich texture and unique soft flower scent brush your taste buds, leaving an endless aftertaste.

Yega Xuefei is a small town, 700-2100 meters above sea level, synonymous with Ethiopian boutique coffee. It has been a wetland since ancient times. The ancient saying "Yirga" means "settle down" and "Cheffe" means "wetland". The mode of production and flavor of coffee here are so outstanding that Ethiopian coffee farmers compete to take pride in the flavor of their coffee, making it the most famous coffee producing area in Africa.

In Ethiopia, the grading and quality control system of coffee is divided into three levels: producer, regional and national. All coffee is inspected by local inspection agencies before leaving the country of origin, and then re-tested at the coffee inspection and grading centers in Addis and Diredawa to determine its quality grade. Coffee is graded before auction and sale and is important for all groups involved in production, acquisition, export and consumption. Before export, coffee must also be sent to a national quality control agency for inspection to confirm that the origin and color meet the export standards to ensure the reputation of Ethiopian coffee.

It is usually a teenage girl who prepares coffee for everyone at home. She first grabbed a handful of light green raw coffee beans, put them in a small iron pot on the charcoal stove, scooped up clean water, and scrubbed them with both hands. Then roast the coffee beans with a small wooden shovel, and soon the coffee beans begin to turn dark black and emit an attractive fragrance. When the girl thought it was time for the fire, she picked up the handle of the iron pot and shook the smoky coffee beans and sent them to everyone for everyone to smell. After everyone nodded and said yes, she poured the cooked beans into a small mortar and pounded them with a big iron bar nearly one meter long and as thick as the child's arm. Soon, the handful of beans was mashed into powder.

The girl scraped out the powder little by little with a small wooden spoon and poured it into a clay pot with a thin neck, bulging belly and big ears, added clean water, and boiled it on a small stove. The water soon boiled and boiled for a while, and the fragrance overflowed. The girl placed several porcelain cups the size of a wine cup on a small wooden box, then picked up the big ears of the coffee pot and filled each cup one by one, then put down the pot and toasted the people sitting around with both hands. This process usually lasts 30 minutes.

Ethiopia grows coffee in different climatic zones, so it has more than 140 farm varieties, and fresh coffee is produced all the year round. The quality of Ethiopian coffee varies according to different elevations and regional ecological environment. The Harar coffee in the southeast highland is a typical Muha coffee with strong aroma; the coffee produced in southwest Wollega has a rich fruity flavor; Limu coffee has wine and spice flavor; Sidamo coffee is mild, full-bodied and sour, while Yirgacheffee coffee has floral flavor. Taste Yega Xuefei, chocolate and sour taste more intense, like lemon flying, with a trance of flowers.

Interestingly, Ethiopians also put pictures of horses on the coffee package to show the purity of the coffee. It is said that in the era when horses were the main means of transportation, Ethiopia had the best thoroughbred horses of Arab origin in the world, and Ethiopians were proud of it. Now they give this pride to Ethiopian coffee. "High-quality coffee should be as pure as thoroughbred horses". As a result of abiding by this concept, the taste of coffee here is still so mellow.

Ethiopia Yega Xuefen

Coffee is Ethiopia's most important export cash crop and the main source of Ethiopia's foreign exchange earnings. Ethiopia's coffee exports account for about 3% of the world market, making it the eighth largest coffee exporter in the world. Coffee exports increased steadily from 58000 tons in 1990 to 110000 tons in 1995-96, and remained at this level in the following years. The export volume exceeded 110000 tons from 2001 to 2002 and reached 127000 tons from 2002 to 2003. As the price of coffee on the international market has been declining for a decade, Ethiopia's foreign exchange earnings have been seriously affected. Before the sharp drop in coffee prices, coffee exports accounted for more than half of Ethiopia's foreign exchange earnings, but now they account for only about 35 per cent. But according to the International Coffee Organization, coffee prices rebounded in 2002, rising from 41 cents per pound in September 2001 to 52 cents per pound in 2002 and 59.7 cents per pound in 2003. The average price in March 2004 was 60.8 cents per pound, an increase of 50% over September 2001. This is excellent news for Ethiopia.

Ethiopia's Yirgacheffe coffee is one of the most unique coffee beans in the world today: it has a strong aroma of flowers, lemon, strong acidity but soft and smooth taste.

It has been estimated that there are at least 2000 varieties of Ethiopian coffee and even more than 4500 kinds of coffee. Compared with the fat posture of Bourbon 'SL28', the main variety to the south of Kenya, or Tibica in Central and South America and Asia, Ethiopian beans look a little malnourished. But "beans" can not be seen, Ethiopian coffee has the most citrus aroma in the world, whether it is instant coffee or freshly ground coffee, you can smell the aroma of orange or lemon when you extract it. The nose is characterized by strong floral, fruity, sour and sweet aromas, but the alcohol is slightly thicker or less dense. The biggest disadvantage is that it is easy to bake unevenly, especially sun-dried beans. Even the best Grade3 Harald sun-dried beans often show uneven color, which is the biggest defect of Ethiopian beans, but the good thing is that it does not affect its good flavor. For coffee fans, you don't have to worry about what the beans look like, it's the most important thing. The stability of Ethiopian water-washed beans is much better than that of sun-dried beans, whose flavor fluctuates greatly every year, so be sure to test it several times before buying in large quantities. If you buy good sun-dried beans, their flavor is much deeper than water-washed beans, but if you buy improperly handled sun-dried beans, it will certainly make people speechless, which is the wish of many coffee fans.

Ethiopian beans are easily recognizable. Most of the beans are small and pointed long beans, the so-called 'longberry', and often mixed with small oval-shaped short beans, the so-called' shortberry', looks uneven in size and uneven in appearance. The commercial bulk beans of Grade4 or Grade5 are mostly mixed with hundreds of different seeds in different regions, so the uneven appearance of beans is the most obvious, and it is not easy to bake even Ethiopian coffee beans into five grades. The first and second stages are washed beans. Washed beans Grade1 represents 3 defective beans per 300g of raw beans; Grade2 represents 12 defective beans per 300g of defective beans. Gradc1 grade water washed beans are very rare and are generally difficult to buy. At present, all the washed beans exported from Ethiopia are Grade2 grade. The quality of sun-dried beans is in the order of Grade3, Grade4 or Grade5. Although the defective beans in Grade4 are much less than those in Grade5, coffee farmers claim that in order to save tax on exports, they often lower the quality of Grade4 to Grade5 in order to save money. This may just be a marketing tactic, but in fact the quality of Grade5 is not as good as that of Gradc4.

Ethiopia has a unique flavor that is different from other flavors and provides customers all over the world with a wide range of taste choices.

In the highlands of southwestern Ethiopia, the Kaffa, Sheka, Gera, Limu and Yayu Senri coffee ecosystems are considered the hometown of Arabica coffee. These forest ecosystems also have a variety of medicinal plants, wild animals and endangered species.

The highlands of western Ethiopia have given birth to new varieties of coffee that are resistant to fruit disease or leaf rust. Ethiopia has many world-famous types of coffee. Some of the major types of coffee are famous for their unique aromas and flavors, including the following:

Limu Coffee

This kind of coffee grows in areas ranging from 1400 to 2000 meters above sea level. After wet processing, this kind of coffee has a rich fragrance, a full fruit with moderate acidity and alkalinity, high quality and attractive spicy flavor. It is estimated that out of 49000 hectares of cultivated area, the average annual production of this coffee is 29000 tons (equivalent to 480000 bags of 60 kg coffee).

Getachew Mengistie, director of Ethiopia's Bureau of intellectual property, bluntly pointed out that farmers sell raw beans for $1.45 a pound, while Starbucks sells for $26 a pound in the United States, 18 times the price difference between the two places. The reason is that Ethiopia does not know how to use intellectual property rights to create value for farmers. As long as it has the name of Ethiopian boutique beans, it can be marketed in the United States at three times the price of ordinary commercial beans. You know, investing in baking, packaging and marketing equipment through downstream channels in the United States alone cannot create such a huge added value, because most of the value comes from the coffee producing area (if Starbucks is not branded as "Sidamo", you can't sell it at such a high price. He stressed: "Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and the famous producing areas of course have huge marketing value, but they are ignored by farmers. As a result, excess profits are finally earned by countries that know how to use the prestige of the place of origin to create value. It took no effort to earn it!

Ethiopia finally woke up and decided to learn from the skills of Western developed countries in mastering brands and creating value for the benefit of hard-working farmers, so in March 2005, Ethiopia applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Administration for the trademark rights of three famous places of origin, namely, Sidamo, Yega Xuefei and Harald. In the future, when American manufacturers sell high-quality coffee in these three places, they must be authorized by Ethiopia before they can put up the name of origin, so that hard-working farmers can get a more reasonable reward.

Oxfam estimates that once Ethiopia acquires the trademark rights of these three places of origin, it will increase Ethiopia's revenue by US $88 million a year. However, Starbucks challenged the US Trademark Office because Starbucks first applied for Sidamo as a trademark as early as two ○○ four years ago, and although the case is still under review, the first applicant has the upper hand. The Ethiopian ambassador to the United States negotiated with Starbucks and received a response: "Please talk to our lawyer directly." However, in ○○ six years, the United States Trademark Office approved Ethiopia to own the trademark "Yega Xuefei", while the names of the two producing areas, Sidamo and Harald, are still under consideration. Starbucks hired a large team of lawyers to step up defense firepower in an attempt to prevent Ethiopia from taking control of trademarks in two other producing areas.

The grade of sun-dried beans has never been regarded as a reference for the quality of a bean, but it is true that sun-dried beans are not as clean as water-washed beans, but they have a special sunny smell and the warmth of the sun.

This bean is a friend suggested that I must enter, he said that this batch, can not be missed. When the raw beans arrived, he also ordered them for the first time to show his support. Drink to the mouth, exclaimed: the original single Gemma is also so charming! Even full of gratitude to him, is really a good bean. The raw beans are basically neat in the sun beans from the outside, and the baking is a little similar to Harald, the entrance is very "African", wild, a little spicy, slightly bitter, but the texture is quite warm. The fruit in the latter section is delicate and strong, with a comfortable sense of natural cane sugar.