Ethiopia Konga Washed Coffee

A washed Yirgacheffe from Konga, where smallholder farmers bring their ripe cherry to a central washing station. Washing strips the fruit away before drying, so the coffee tastes clean and floral, like a fragrant tea.

Origin & Story

Konga is a washing station a few kilometers south of the town of Yirgacheffe, run by a cooperative of smallholder farmers. The coffee grows on small family plots among food crops and shade trees, at roughly 1,800 to 2,100 meters, the same kind of layered garden landscape that UNESCO added to its World Heritage list in 2023 as the Gedeo Cultural Landscape.

Washed processing is what gave Yirgacheffe its reputation for clarity. The ripe cherries are pulped soon after picking, the sticky layer around the bean is fermented off in water tanks, and the clean beans are washed and dried on raised beds. With none of the fruit left on the bean while it dries, the flavors that remain are the delicate ones: jasmine, citrus and stone fruit.

A cooperative station matters because each farmer harvests only a small amount. By bringing their cherries to one place, they can be sorted together and sold as a lot large enough to export under one name, instead of disappearing into a blend.

Expect bergamot and jasmine on the nose, peach as the cup cools, and a lasting sweetness in the finish, in a body so light that people often compare it to tea. It makes a beautiful clean filter coffee, and a paper filter keeps it bright.

Reading the Flavor Profile

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