Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Brew

The municipality of Gedeb is a bustling outpost that links commerce between the Guji Zone and Gedeo Zones, with an expansive network of processing stations who buy cherry from across zone borders. Coffees from this community, much closer to Guji Zone than the rest of Yirgacheffe, are often the most explosive cup profiles from anywhere in Ethiopia. Fully washed lots are often sparklingly clean and fruit candy-like in structure.
The communities surrounding Gedeb reach some of the highest growing elevations for coffee in the world. Banko Chelchele is one of the communities east of Gedeb, part of a greater area known as “Worka”. This dense corner of Gedeb includes farmers that are cooperative-affiliated, as well as independent washing stations of various types, many of which are simply named “Chelchele”.

396 local farmers contribute cherry to Worka Chelchele. The washing station was built in 2021, on 2.5 hectares of land with 12 fermentation tanks and over 250 raised beds for drying. Washed coffees at Worka Chelchele are depulped and fermented for 48 hours, washed clean with fresh water, soaked again in fresh water, and dried on raised beds for an average of 18 days.

Worka Chelchele, as well as the entire export chain for this coffee, is owned by Tadesse Desta Import & Export, a small but modernized coffee logistics company. They use electronic color sorters at their small dry mill in Addis, and are currently in the middle of their organic and RFA certification processes, which they expect to have in place next year. Worka Chelchele is their main processing source for the best coffees they export.