This is the second year that we’ve bought coffee from the Hunkute Co-operative, but January this year was the first chance we’d had to visit the washing station itself. Located in the Sidamo region, a few hours drive south of Ethiopia’s capital city, Addis Ababa, the Hunkute washing station takes fresh cherry deliveries from around 1,700 neighbouring small holder farmers.

The station managers are usually quite conscientious about the separation of ripe and unripe cherry prior to processing, but on our visit (late in the season) it appeared that the very small amount of processing that was still underway was certainly going to be constituting lower grades of quality.

During normal production, however, coffee cherries are picked, delivered and pulped on the same day before being slowly fermented in water for two to three days; this extended fermentation time due in large part to the high altitude of the washing station. The parchment coffee is then graded in channels according to its density, with the heaviest grade being from the cherries that have matured most slowly, amplifying and intensifying their sweetness, character and aroma.

After a post-grading soak of up to 24 hours, the coffee is then distributed to raised drying beds, where it is hand-sorted for any further visibly-defective content, and covered over with heavy plastic sheeting, both overnight and during the hottest part of the day.

Once dried and rested in conditioning bins, the coffee will be transported to another facility where its milled to remove the external papery parchment layer and sorted further, before being bagged for export to Europe.