Ethiopia Dry Process Suke Quto

This lot comes from a processing site in Suke Quto region, Ethiopia's Southern Guji Zone, where altitudes top 2200 meters. It's worth noting that this is a pretty generic name, in that it's common practice to name your processing site after the nearest town. So there are several other "Suke Quto"s as well. This Suke Quto is managed by Ismael Hassen from Kayon Mountain coffee, a name you might be familiar with from coffees of previous years (currently, also selling Goro Bedessa and Guji Buku from this group). They do a fantastic job controlling quality, consistently providing us with some of our top scoring Ethiopian coffees. Sorting out imperfect coffee cherry starts on delivery, and extends all the way to the drying tables. Farmers must hand sort the cherry for defects before it is received. The cherry is then floated in tanks of water to catch any underripe coffee before the processing begins. For dry process coffee, the whole cherries are laid to dry on raised beds for 2-3 weeks, during which workers turn the coffee and continue the process of picking out any undesirable coffee cherry. Buku's beds are built with split bamboo reeds  so they're flat and quite sturdy, then a layer of cloth to allow air to pass through the beds. You see a lot of chicken wire used at other sites, which tends to sag, creating uneven coffee layers.This lot stood out as being very aromatic, intensely sweet, and berry-forward. It's really a stunning dry process coffee! When roasting, expect a higher instance of chaff, and darker roast coloring. This is par for the course for dry process coffees, and just means adjusting visual queues a little, and of course, vacuuming out your roaster between batches. It's a small added effort to get to enjoy such an incredible tasting natural!