Ethiopia Dry Process Bobea Uke

Bobea Uke processing site serves roughly 1200 small holder coffee farmers in Woreda Odo Shakiso, Western Guji. Elevation at the site is roughly 2000 meters above sea level, and the farms they buy cherry from range from 1850 to 2250 meters above sea level. Each lot they produce is made up of coffee from hundreds of different farmers in the region, most with only a few hundred coffee trees or less. You tend to see coffee intercropped with other fruits and vegetables, "false banana" being one the more common food staples to see planted in the region. The false banana plant has many uses, and is widely utilized for it's starchy inners that are often fermented with yeast to make a bread ("kocho"), and the leaves can be transformed into roofs for houses, baskets, and more. Bobea coffee station is a privately run operation and they only produce dry process coffees at this time. Dry processing is the oldest processing method and involves drying the coffee bean and cherry whole. From pictures you see, you might think you can just dump the cherries to the beds and wait. This is not the case! The coffee has to be spread out to a layer depth of only a few centimeters, no more, in order to allow air flow. The coffee is turned hourly, or even more frequently, in order to facilitate even drying and keep the coffee from molding. It's not difficult, but requires constant attention. During this time of physical attention, workers continually pull out lower quality coffee in the form of physical defects and coffee that was not harvested at peak ripeness. This lot underwent several layers of hand picking from the whole coffee cherry to the final milled green coffee in order to achieve "Grade 1" status.