Megadu

Tastes of: Cherries, Red berries, Pineapple & Violet

About the coffee:

This is a wonderful lot grown by Gash Sentayehu. This is the third year the producer of this lot Bette Buna, has worked with him. And Gash now manage the processing on his own, creating absolutely stunning natural anaerobic lots on a larger scale, and their quality improves each year! It’s a wonderful collaboration between a community farmer and Bette Buna that lifts the cup profiles to another level, and we think there’s a great future ahead for these two farmers as role models who showcase the power of kindness and collaboration.

The coffee is fermented anaerobically in sealed containers for 96hrs, then is dried on raised African-style beds. After dry milling locally to remove the hulls, there was another round of hand sorting by the milling team to remove any defects before the bags of green coffee were loaded on a truck to the main Bette Buna 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.

Altitude: 2000-2200 MASL

Process: Anaerobic Natural

Location: Guji, Megadu

Varietal: 74112,74110, Wild Guji Megadu

About Bette Buna:

Bette Buna literally translates to "House of Coffee". Our producers started after Dawit's Grandfather Syoum and Grandmother Emame asked him and Hester to take over their farm and responsibility for building the community of Taferi Kela. Even though this village shares a mountain range with better-known Sidamina producers, it has been overlooked so far and no other company or industry of any type works in this area.

Although coffee productions accounts for about a third of the country's GDP, most people working in coffee (≈90%) do not make a livable income. Bette Buna has set out to change that in their community. Through teaching farmers to improve their soil, agro-forestry systems, the importance of picking ripe cherries they help their community produce better and more coffee. Resulting in a more livable income. Bette Buna is an equal opportunity employer, which is rare in a culture that doesn't typically provide meaningful work for differently abled or disabled people. This is particularly visible in their nursery, where you could see deaf people, families of people with disabilities and other marginalized groups, such as single mothers.

We met Hester in March and got to see the passion and care she has for her community. After tasting their coffees, we could not be happier to work directly with someone who cares this much about their community bringing hope and opportunity to communities through coffee.