Ethiopian Yergacheffe
While most boutique coffee distributors work with small farmers, touting the higher quality of the beans, I was surprised to read Zach and Dani’s claim that they work with larger plantations for the same reason:
On Ethiopian coffee plantations, Ethiopian Yergacheffe coffee beans are generally harvested from September through November. However, small family farmers may harvest wild coffee at varying times throughout the year. Much of this wild coffee is harvested by stripping it from the branches in large bunches. These wild harvests may include unripe berries, leaves, twigs, and over-ripe berries, which then need to be meticulously sorted.
In contrast, farmers on the larger plantations carefully hand pick only the ripe coffee berries. When the harvest is good, experienced pickers can harvest up to 250 pounds of fruit a day. Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee beans comes from plantations in the Sidamo region where high-quality arabica coffee beans are carefully handpicked and wet processed.
Hmm. Given my experience with Intelligentsia and their wonderful, small-farmed beans, I find this a bit hard to believe. That said, I quite enjoyed the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans, which brewed up very nicely. A City + roast gives a pleasant floral sweetness that fades cleanly.
Sounds a bit backwards to me, as well.
I’d tend to think that small farmed beans have a greater chance of being hand-picked, allowing for judgement-calls on bean ripeness (pick it, leave it for later, throw it away).
Of course, If the farm is (under)paying it’s labour by the pound, they’d be tossing every bit of cherry-sized whatever in their baskets to boost the weight.
So they’re probably right about automated farms beating out the sweat-shop style smaller farms for quality, but that probably doesn’t hold if the small-farm workers are motivated/fairly paid.