Shantawene Anaerobic

The year 2021 is steadily coming to an end and what better way to celebrate it than introducing another Rare roaster from a country we haven’t received coffee from yet; GERMANY!

The roastery is called 19 grams and they’re based in the country’s capital and renowned specialty coffee city, Berlin. For the past couple of decades, their core team has been growing their business & introducing coffees from multiple tiers to their customers. We’ve worked with 19 grams in our other subscriptions before and realized they had some really high-end stuff in their lineup every now and then. So, we asked them to ship samples for Rare and found something that really blew our minds!

The coffee comes from a single farm in Ethiopia called Gatta in Shantawene Village in Sidama Bensa. At the elevation of 2120 – 2210 masl, the farm lies in the midst of a 100-year-old natural forest. The first coffee trees were planted in 2013 and their own drying station was built in 2017. With bunch of shade trees and their very own processing facilities, Gatta Farm has been producing some of the finest coffees we’ve tasted from Ethiopia this year!

The drying station serves not only the Gatta Farm but the community around it and in 2020 their Natural processed coffee won the Ethiopian Cup Of Excellence.

This coffee consists of multiple landraces that are indigenous to Ethiopia, which is often referred as “heirloom”. What’s interesting about this coffee however is that part of it is separated Typica varietal which is one of Arabica’s early varieties. Having Typica from Ethiopia is still not that common and this adds to the coffee’s complex and sophisticated character.

In anaerobic processing, the ripe red cherries are handpicked and floated in water buckets. After that, the cherries are put into sealed fermentation tanks for desired amount of time to achieve the sweet, fruity and complex profile and then dried in-cherry on raised beds. Thanks to careful control of temperature & humidity, the coffee keeps amazingly it’s clean character even though it’s clearly heavily processed.

Expect notes of tropical fruits, blueberry juice and ripe strawberry.

Farm: Gatta Farm
Farmer: Assefa & Mulugeta Dukamo Korma
Location: Shantawene, Ethiopia
Altitude: 2120 – 2210 masl.
Cultivar: Typica, Heirloom
Process: Natural Anaerobic