Specs
Producers: Smalholders of Bombe
Station: Basha Bekele's Bombe
Region: Bombe, Sidama, Ethiopia
Harvest: December 2024 - February 2025
Varieties: Walega (74158)
Process: Natural
Altitude: 2150 masl
Importer: Crop to Crop
Roasted in Toronto Canada on NOV 18
For best results we recommend resting your filter coffee for two to three weeks post-roast before brewing.
Basha Bekele Bombe
Producer Profile
This natural Walega variety comes from Cup of Excellence Champion Basha Bekele and 100 registered out-growers from Bombe in Sidama. This is now our second year buying coffee from Basha. Once the ECX was liberalized, Basha obtained his own export license and now grows coffee (primarily 74158, known locally as "Walega") on 12 hectares of semi-forested plots. While cherry prices were high this year, Basha maintained an uncommon practice in Ethiopia: delivering a second payment to the producers he bought cherry from once the coffee was sold. Currently, Basha exclusively produces dry-processed coffee—including some white honeys and anaerobics— and practices cherry floatation, before slowly drying all his lots on raised beds.
Sidama
Bombe is part of the famous Sidama zone, where many of our favourite Ethiopian coffees are grown. Coffee is the main cash crop ithere, where it benefits from very high altitudes and a favourable micro-climate.
74158
74158 is one of six selections that were approved for release in 1974 as part of a CBD-resistance (Coffee Berry Disease) selection program. During the 1970's, researchers from the Jimma Agricultural Research Centre searched the forests in the Illuababora zone for CBD-resistant mother trees. Today 74158 is heavily propagated in South Western Ethiopia, and is one of two dominant varieties in Bensa, along with 74112.
Natural
Cherry is collected, floated, then dried for approximately 18 days in the sun on raised beds.