Specialty Coffee Advent Calendar – 2020

Dec 19

Uraga

Producer: Israel Degfa, of the company Kerchanse
Origin: Uraga, Ethopia
Roaster: Drop Coffee roasters
Cultivar: Indigenous wild varietals and 74110
Process: Natural processed, the grade one coffee cherries are carefully sorted and dry for over 25 days.
Taste Profile: This is a sweet cup with notes of mango and blueberries and a sweetness remaining of chocolate mousse. The coffee has beautiful longlasting a citric acidity in the aftertaste.
Roast Date: 26.11.2020

This is one of the “bigger” cup profiles we have from Israel Degfa in Ethiopia. This is partly due to the high altitude of 2000 masl, the late harvest and a longer season. The coffee is very mature and gets a big sweet mouthfeel, reminding of chocolate mousse, which makes it a very complex cup with the citric acidity and blueberry and mango notes. Ethiopia is one of our favorite origins. Its’ taste profile and culture are both diverse and interesting. The Arabica coffee plant was first found growing wild in Ethiopia and Yemen, and then Ethiopia became the motherland of coffee. About 6,6 million bags are produced in the country every year, of which almost half is kept in the country for local consumption.

About Israel Degfa
This is the fifth year in a row that we are buying coffee from Israel Degfa, the only private producer we are working within Ethiopia. Israel has become a good friend of ours and we want to support his work on sustainability. Israel is one of the warmest people we know and also truly successful in the business. He was born near Sidamo, Yirgalem, and his parents were both in coffee in different ways. His mum sold coffee at the bus station and his dad was a farmer. This is where he found his love for coffee. He went to primary school in Yiralem and went to high school and college in Addis Abeba. In 2013 Israel founded the company by Kerchanshe trading company that is named after the nearest town, Kerchanste town (fondly referred to as Kercha). Today he has 26 washing stations and a few dry-mills; the guy is 33 years old and has only had the business for 7 years, talk about impressive. In the surrounding area of Uraga, there are many smallholding semi-forest farms, about 1200 of them are delivering freshly picked coffee cherries to Uraga. Most of them are having 2-3 hectare farms which are slightly bigger than in other regions. The days they are not delivering coffee, many of them are working at the process station.

Sustainability
We want to support Israel Degfa’s work on sustainability with the farmers aiming to get them out of poverty through coffee and he is producing some really stunning coffees that we are more than happy to buy. Israel visited us at Drop the first year we worked together, in 2015. Since then we have been visiting each other every year. Israel is continuously improving his standards of coffee. Last year the total percentage of production that was specialty coffee by Kerchance has almost doubled, speciality coffee is close to 10% of all coffee produced. Higher quality means higher prices for the coffee for the farmers delivering coffee. As part of our transparency and the ongoing coffee price crisis, we want to share our FOB prices for the coffee we buy. This coffee has been paid 3 USD per pound. An entire 10% of Kershanse’s profit goes into a non-profit sustainability company, that is
investing in schools within the local communities among other things.

Drop Coffee Roasters

We visit every producer we’re buying from, and through a sustainability lawyer, we have created internal guidelines and checklists to help us through the whole buying process. Most of the ingredients used at our café are local, produced by small-scale producers, and mainly organic.
Our origins of focus are Bolivia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Kenya.  We’re crafting to perfection our preferred taste profile and maintaining our ethical business model with the producers. We only source fully transparent coffee from single farms and cooperatives, working with amazing coffee from people we like.

Drop Coffee has a flavour vision of a clear and bright cup where the origin of the coffee should shine through. We like to present as much of the coffees’ acidity and sweetness as possible. Some coffees will be more acidic and juicy – and some creamy and chocolatey – depending on the origin, but all the coffees are roasted for clarity. The coffee has a light to medium roast profile, suitable for all brewing methods