This year’s harvest was early! In Guji, usually harvest starts in December, but this year the cherries were ready to pick in November. After picking, the fresh cherries were placed on African raised beds and hand sorted by each farmer as a way of “pre-cleaning” out underripe and overripe cherries and any leaves or sticks.

The sorted cherries were then kept on the beds to dry in the sun until the right moisture level was reached. The raised beds are important to facilitate airflow to ensure equal drying of each cherry. The drying process takes about 20-25 days, depending on the strength of the sun.

Once the correct moisture level was reached, the dry cherries, still in their natural hulls, were bagged and moved to the Bette Buna mill in Megadu. There the natural lots rest for a minimum of 8 weeks after bagging to improve the complexity and intensity of each cup profile. Each coffee is evaluated in the lab, and a decision is made about which “sub-lots” could work as a community blend.

After dry milling locally to remove the hulls, there was another round of hand sorting by the milling team to remove any defects. After that, the bags of green coffee were loaded on a truck to take a 3-5 day drive to our main dry mill in Gelan. Here the cherries underwent another round of cleaning, screening on size and density, and color sorting, and were bagged a final time.

This blend is cherries from Bette Buna’s own farm combined with cherries from a community farmer named Wodera.