Bombe - Honey | Ethiopia

Ethiopia — Tamiru Tadesse Alo Coffee Bombe Ethiopian Landrace (Honey)

Tastes Like — 🌸 White Flowers • 🍋 Lemon Zest • 🥭 Mango • 🍵 Oolong Tea

DETAILS

• Producer: Tamiru Tadesse Tesema — Alo Coffee
• Station: Bombe
• Region: Bensa, Sidama, Ethiopia
• Varietal: Ethiopian Landrace
• Process: Honey
• Altitude: 2,160–2,220 MASL
• Roast: Light

INTRO

From Tamiru Tadesse and Alo Coffee at their Bombe station in Bensa — a honey processed Ethiopian of exceptional elegance and aromatic precision from one of Ethiopia's most celebrated and rapidly rising specialty producers. Vibrant and tea-like, it tastes closer to a washed coffee than a typical honey, but the processing lends lovely yellow fruit notes that elevate it into something genuinely special. In the cup: white flowers, lemon zest, mango, and an oolong tea finish that lingers beautifully.

THE PRODUCER

Tamiru Tadesse Tesema was born in the small village of Alo in Bensa — a district of Sidama with rich volcanic soils and high elevation that has become one of Ethiopia's most important specialty coffee origins. After a career as a university professor and electrical engineer, coffee kept calling him back. When Ethiopia held its first Cup of Excellence competition in 2020, Tamiru saw firsthand that exceptional coffee could be both celebrated and properly rewarded — and together with his wife Messi, founded Alo Coffee, an exporting company and network of processing stations throughout Sidama.

In 2021, with their inaugural Cup of Excellence entry — a lot processed from their home village of Alo — Tamiru and Messi won the competition outright, transforming their leap of faith into one of Ethiopia's most compelling specialty success stories. Alo Coffee now operates an extensive network of high-end processing stations across Bensa, Bona, Burra, and Nensebo, working in close collaboration with smallholder partners and producing some of the highest-scoring microlots in Ethiopia year on year.

Honey processing has become increasingly relevant in Bensa as Ethiopia's climate has grown more arid — offering producers a water-conserving alternative to washed processing while unlocking a dimension of fruit sweetness and complexity that purely washed lots cannot achieve.

THE PROCESS

The Honey process at Bombe involves:

🍒 Hand-picking — Cherries selectively harvested at bright red ripeness only 💧 Flotation — Floated to remove defects before processing 🔧 Pulping — Outer skin removed while a high percentage of mucilage is retained on the bean 🧪 One-week dry fermentation — Beans fermented dry in their mucilage for approximately one week, the mucilage turning dark and sticky throughout 💧 Rinsing — Mucilage rinsed off after the fermentation period ☀️ Drying — Dried on raised beds until optimal moisture content is achieved

The one-week dry fermentation with mucilage intact is the defining step — by fermenting in the fruit's natural sugars without added water, Alo Coffee builds the mango and lemon zest yellow fruit character that defines this lot, while keeping the cup clean and structured enough to read almost like a washed coffee — with the florality and oolong tea elegance that make it so compellingly beautiful.

THE CUP

A vibrant, tea-like, and exceptionally elegant honey from one of Ethiopia's most decorated and purposeful specialty producers — white flowers and lemon zest up front, mango and nectarine sweetness through the middle, and a long, refined oolong tea finish. Alo Coffee's Bombe station at its most luminous.

Flavour Notes

🌸 White Flowers 🍋 Lemon Zest 🥭 Mango 🍵 Oolong Tea