PRODUCERS
Sigrfredo is a retired agronomy professor who, together with his business partners, founded the Los Naranjos group farms and the Renacer processing station in El Salvador. He manages a team of six field technicians who help small and medium-sized growers improve agricultural practices for higher yields and better soil quality. The Renacer group includes approximately 350 producers supplying coffee.
Mustefa Abakeno is a smallholder farmer who owns 18 hectares of land near the town of Agaro in the Jimma region of western Ethiopia. His farm is located at an altitude of 2,040 meters above sea level and is planted with coffee varieties from the Jimma Research Centre.
PROCESSING
In Salvador, the coffee cherries are delivered to a station where the coffee is washed, cleaned, and stripped of unripe beans. It is then pulped and fermented until it reaches a pH of 4.5. The coffee is then washed again and transported to the African beds, where it is dried to a moisture content of 11 %.
Mustefa owns a small machine to remove the coffee husk and pulp, which he uses to process the washed coffee. Due to the scarcity of water in this area of Ethiopia, the coffee ferments for a very short period of time (8 hours). It is then dried for 13-16 days. The taste of coffee processed this way is similar to that of the honey method.
VARIETIES
The coffee from El Salvador is a blend of several varieties, mainly South American, which are characterized by a balanced taste and fruity or spicy notes in the cup.
Given the historical tradition, the way coffee is grown in Ethiopia, along with the political situation and the local system, it is almost impossible to find single variety lots (parts of the harvest). Although this has slowly begun to change in recent years, for now, the typical designation for coffee varieties from Ethiopia is still Ethiopian heirloom varieties or Ethiopian indigenous varieties.