Ethiopia Limmu Honey Process Specialty Coffee Beans

The Habtamu Gato washing station sits in Limmu, in Ethiopia's southwestern highlands, at 1,930 metres. It is a micro-lot site in semi-forest highland ecology, where the coffee grows under natural shade that slows cherry maturation and builds sugar complexity. That is the reason its output is consistently Grade 1. This is one of the station's honey lots, which it produces only occasionally. Habtamu Gato is better known for its washed coffees, and those are immaculate: clean and tea-like, with sweet black tea, tangerine, citrus, toffee and hazelnut butter over a balanced, chewy brightness. The honey lots go somewhere else. They are punchier and more fruit-forward, with cherry, grapefruit and a bright lemon edge, crisp stone fruit and a citric complexity, and they tend to score around 87.5 SCA points. Roughly 109 smallholders bring cherry to the station, a mix of wild and cultivated heirlooms dominated by two climate-resilient Ethiopian selections, JARC 74110 and JARC 74112. Lots are hand-sorted at intake to pull out underripe and defective cherries, fermented cleanly for 20 to 24 hours, then moved to raised African beds where the parchment is turned continuously and dried slowly over as much as 12 days.