Echemo Espresso - Christmas Edition

Producer: Khalid Shifa
Cultivar: Ethiopian Heirloom (Coche Forest)
Process: Washed
Region: Goma, Jimma
Country: Ethiopia
Harvest: December 2024
Roast Profile: Espresso Roast
Certification: Organic – Certified by Debio NO-ØKO-01
Contents: Whole Coffee Beans
Bag Size: 250g

Tasting Notes: 🌸 Floral · 🧁 Baking Spice · 🍑 Stone Fruits

From the lush Coche Forest in Goma, Jimma, this coffee from producer Khalid Shifa embodies the elegance and balance that define Ethiopia’s heirloom varieties. The result is a beautifully aromatic espresso with floral aromatics, sweet spice, and juicy stone fruit tones, creating a cup that’s both comforting and vibrant.

Processing Details

• Picking & Sorting: Selectively hand-picked by skilled local workers, ensuring only perfectly ripe cherries are chosen for processing.

• De-pulping, Fermenting & Washing: The cherries are de-pulped with a small disc pulper. The parchment coffee, with mucilage intact, undergoes a 12–24 hour wet fermentation in clean water. After fermentation, the coffee is washed in channels where floaters are removed, and beans are graded by density.

• Drying: Dried on raised African beds for 10–12 days. During the day, the parchment coffee is regularly raked to promote even drying. The beds are shaded during peak sun hours and covered at night to prevent moisture condensation. Drying concludes when the beans reach 10–12% moisture content.

• Storage & Milling: Once dried, the coffee rests in jute bags before being transported to Addis Ababa, where it is hulled, cleaned, and sorted before export. The green coffee is packed in GrainPro-lined jute bags to preserve freshness.

This lot from Khalid Shifa’s organic Coche Forest project showcases the incredible diversity of Ethiopian terroir — a harmonious espresso with floral brightness, warming spice depth, and silky fruit sweetness that reflects both nature’s wild beauty and meticulous human craftsmanship

A Note from Tim:

We have been buying coffees from Khalid for many years now but it was not until my visit to his farm in November 2023 when I was able to make an impact on the quality of his coffees. During that visit I was able go through his production steps to see if we could agree upon a protocol for him to follow in order to try to elevate the quality of his coffees. As usual there were many small details that could be improved, some with small and others with major impact on the final quality. A few of the major ones included separation of every daily picking, keeping each daily lot stored in air tight grain pro bags after drying.  Drying the coffees under shade nets, keeping better control of the fermentation and slightly changing the process were also part of what we changed and improved. This meant that I was able to evaluate several samples, each representing a daily picking,  instead of just 2-3 samples like previous years where the coffees had been bulked together.

By doing this we were able to remove the lower qualities from the higher quality lots and in combination with better processing and drying practices the coffees really cleaned up and became more expressive. We would of course not be able to change all this in such short time had it not been for the wonderful help and follow up done by Fantanesh Keleme and the whole team at Belco in Ethiopia, who made sure Khalid understood and followed the protocols for all the coffees he produced for us.

We also milled the coffees in a smaller dry-mill this year where we were able to also vacuum pack the coffees before export. This helps preserve the coffees flavour and freshness for a much longer time.   

I don’t really have any particular criteria for selecting Christmas edition coffees other than that the coffee itself needs to be among the best we have in stock. The washed coffees from Echemo are normally quite a delicate when brewed as filter coffee. I find it is like drinking a white tea with some nice notes of peach and florals. However, when brewed as espresso it tastes more intense and I tend to get sweet notes of baking spice in the aftertaste. This is why I believe it is a perfect coffee for the holiday espresso, and also a a nice gift to someone who loves to brew espresso.