BASHA BEKELE "AFRO FUNK #6"

Farmers: Basha Bekele & 100 small holders

Origin: Bensa Kokose, Sidama, Ethiopia

Altitude: ~2215m

Process: Natural

Varietal: 74158

Roast Level: Light

Notes: blackberry pie, apricot jam, honeydew & aguapanela

BASHA & his 2024 COE WIN!

Every year we aim to have the best coffees on our menu. That's kinda what everyone in specialty aims for, obviously. Ethiopia is an origin we have yet to travel to, but are planning for a February excursion to meet the producers like Basha and Habtamu. Basha, this year, has won 1st place in CUP OF EXCELLENCE ETHIOPIA. 1st PLACE! It's an unbelievable feat & we got very lucky, picking up this adjacent lot with the help of our partners at Crop 2 Cup. This natural is creamy, and rich with dense fruit. It's a wonderfully clean natural from Ethiopia's best producer this year. Enjoy it while it lasts!

A WORD FROM CROP2CUP

We stopped by Basha’s Bombe drying station on our second day in Bensa in December. Basha’s father—also a community man who with Basha built a church for the community at their site in Bombe—was once a manager for a co-op in Bombe
that supplied coffee to the Sidama Union. Before the government made it possible for smallholders to obtain export licenses, both he and his father sold their cherry to the cooperative. Basha now has his own export license and grows coffee (primarily 74158, known locally as “Walega”) in semi-forested plots on 12 hectares in addition to operating collection sites in Bombe, Shantawane, and Kokose—collecting cherry from producers growing coffee as high as 2300 masl. While cherry prices were high this year, Basha maintained a practice we didn’t see everywhere: delivering a second
payment to the 126 producers he bought cherry from once the coffee sold. Like most smallholders around Bensa, Basha exclusively produces dry processes—which includes experiments with anaerobic styles of fermentation—and practices
cherry flotation before drying his coffee slowly on raised beds (with some preparations drying under shade). This is our first import from Basha!