Cheltenham’s Ritual Roasters have got a new look and some exciting new coffee to boot. This lot comes from the Koke washing station in Yirgacheffe, an Ethiopian coffee region whose reputation precedes it. A combination of perfect coffee cultivating conditions and a vast wealth of local experience in coffee production means coffee drinkers around the world are always on the hunt for Yirgacheffe’s trademark juicy and refined cups, and this one hits the mark with bright, tropical fruit flavour and a creamy vanilla body.

Koke Washing Station sits at almost 2000MASL and processes cherries from smallholder farmers in the Koke kebele who grow indigenous Ethiopian heirloom varieties. Ethiopian heirloom is generally used as an all-encompassing phrase for unidentified, wild landrace varieties but efforts by Ethiopia’s coffee research org  JARC have been able to distinguish and better classify varieties like Wolisho, Kurume, Dega which are used in this lot.

For this washed coffee, ripe cherries were sorted for under and overripes by hand then depulped. The coffee was then fermented for up to 72 hours in cement fermentation tanks before being washed with clean water, soaked in water  channels, then dried on raised beds.