Basha Bekele - Anaerobic Natural - Ethiopia - Light

Origin

• 🇪🇹 Ethiopia· Yirgacheffe

Tasting notes

Character

• Experimental
  50
• Funky
  40
• Bright
  30
• Clean
  20

BASHA BEKELE Anaerobic NaturalAnaerobic fermentationCherries or depulped seeds ferment in sealed, oxygen-free tanks. Produces intense, unusual flavors — cinnamon, bubblegum, boozy fruit — that divide opinion. Bensa, Ethiopia VarietyVariety (cultivar)The botanical subtype of the coffee plant — Gesha, Bourbon, SL28 — analogous to grape varieties in wine. A major driver of cup character alongside origin and process.: 74158 Process: NaturalNatural processThe whole cherry is dried with the fruit still on the seed. Gives heavier body and big fruit flavors — think berries and wine — sometimes with a fermenty edge. Anaerobic Fermentation: 36 hrs in sealed fermentation tanks Drying time: 24-26 days dried on raised beds with shade netting Altitude: 2250masl Location: Bensa, Ethiopia Production: 25 Bags Community Context We stopped by Basha’s Bombe drying station on our second day in Bensa in December. Basha’s father—also a community man who with Basha built a church for the community at their site in Bombe—was once a manager for a co-op in Bombe that supplied coffee to the Sidama Union. Before the government made it possible for smallholdersSmallholderA farmer growing coffee on a small family plot — often under two hectares. Most of the world's coffee is grown this way, typically pooled at cooperatives or washing stations. to obtain export licenses, both he and his father sold their cherry to the cooperative. Basha now has his own export license and grows coffee (primarily 74158, known locally as “Walega”) in semi-forested plots on 12 hectares in addition to operating collection sites in Bombe, Shantawane, and Kokose—collecting cherry from producers growing coffee as high as 2300 masl. While cherry prices were high this year, Basha maintained a practice we didn’t see everywhere: delivering a second payment to the 126 producers he bought cherry from once the coffee sold. Like most smallholders around Bensa, Basha exclusively produces dry processes—which includes experiments with anaerobic styles of fermentation—and practices cherry flotation before drying his coffee slowly on raised beds (with some preparations drying under shade). Country Context Ethiopia is a coffee powerhouse. It’s the birthplace of the plant, the seventh largest producing country in world, and one of the world’s leading consumers of coffee as well. Because coffee is such a vital part of the economy in Ethiopia, the government has a hand in it, making for an interesting coffee context. Ethiopia is proudly a nation that has never been colonized, and the longtime government has been from a tribal minority (the Tigray). In 2018 there was a coup that installed an Oromo president – the largest tribe in Ethiopia. Its na