Ethiopia Guji - Honey Process - Kayon Mountain Roasted Coffee

Summary

This Ethiopia offering provides an explosion of cooked raspberry and citrus while also offering some nice sweetness of praline and cocoa on the back end. It has some tangy acidity but balanced from how it's processed.  

Details

The Kayon Mountain Coffee Farm is 500 hectares with about 300 hectares planted in coffee and has been owned and operated by Ismael Hassen Aredo and his family since 2012. It is located 510 kilometers south of Addis Ababa, and the property crosses the border of two villages—Taro and Sewana—located in the Oromia region, in the Guji zone of the Shakiso district of Ethiopia.

Ismael oversees a staff of 25 permanent full-time and 300 seasonal employees, and the farm management offers free transportation services as well as financial support for building schools and administration buildings for the community. The farm competes with a nearby mining village for seasonal workers, so Ismael and his family tend to pay higher wages to their pickers in order to incentivize them returning year after year.

Kayon Mountain farm has a nursery on-site and utilizes shade (acacia and other indigenous trees) to protect the coffee as well as for creating compost to fertilizer naturally. Ismael is meticulous about not only the structure and management of the farm itself but also the harvesting and processing. Honey, Natural and Washed lots are produced on the property. 

What is a Honey Processed Coffee?

Fruit Removal: Fruit skin is removed within 24 hours of harvest; all or some of the mucilage is left to dry on the seeds
Fermentation: Occurs throughout the drying process (until seeds reach a moisture content of 11%)
Drying Time: 18–25 days on average
Profile: Can express some fruity/pulpy/jammy flavors or stewed-fruit-like characteristics; caramel or burnt-sugar sweetness; nuttiness

The relatively recent emergence of a processing style known as Honey has become prominent throughout Central American coffee-producing countries, perhaps most notably Costa Rica. In many respects, the Honey process is similar to the Brazilian post-harvest process known as Pulp or Pulped Natural. Similar to the Pulped Natural methodology, Honey coffee is depulped to remove the skin of the cherry, and the coffee seed is allowed to dry with some or all of its sticky fruit mucilage intact. This process retains some of the desirable characteristics of a full Natural coffee (heavy body, sweet fruitiness with lower acidity, deep chocolate notes) while also speeding the drying process considerably, and reducing some of the risks of spoilage, mold, and other defects that can occur with fully intact coffee cherry on the drying patios or tables.

In Costa Rica (and increasingly in El Salvador and Honduras, among other places worldwide), some producers will remove a particular amount of the mucilage material in order to manipulate the coffee’s finished profile. Others focus on modulating the drying process to achieve different Honey levels, assigning differentiating terms to correspond with the results, from Yellow/Golden Honey (the mildest, perhaps closest to Washed coffees), Red Honey, and Black Honey (which is arguably most comparable to the Brazilian Pulped Natural).

The most obvious benefit to the Honey process over strict Naturals is the speed and efficiency of the drying process, as well as the various flavor characteristics that can emerge through fermentation and exposure. On the other hand, the exposed fruit material does create more risk for the producers, as it requires more labor in drying to prevent taints from developing. These coffees will also often have an uneven or inconsistent appearance in their green forms, which can be unappealing for roasters who are used to the more uniform cleanliness of a Washed coffee.