Roasted by Pala Kaffebrenneri

Pala was started in Trondheim by Idar Ellingsen in 2018, and is run today together with Roy Davidsen. Idar has worked in specialty coffee since 2005, first as a barista and coffee shop manager, then as head roaster and QC manager for Jacobsen og Svart and Langøra before opening his own roastery. He is a certified Q grader and a two-time Norwegian cupping champion.

The stated aim at Pala is to move backwards in the value chain and influence the coffee earlier than the final step, working with importers who are transparent about traceability. Roasting is deliberately restrained: the idea is that the roast should not overwrite what the green coffee already has. On a natural like this one, that matters, since a heavier roast would flatten exactly the fruit character the processing was designed to build.

They roast on a Diedrich IR-12, a 12 kg drum roaster that heats with infrared burners rather than an open flame, which gives a gentler, more even heat transfer than a conventional gas drum.

Chelbesa and SNAP Coffee

Chelbesa is a kebele (village) in the Gedeb district of the Gedeo zone, within the wider Yirgacheffe growing area. The land here is dense semi-forest: coffee grows in the shade of ensete (false banana) and other canopy trees, on steep ground between roughly 1,900 and 2,300 masl.

The washing station is owned by SNAP Specialty Coffee, founded in Addis Ababa in 2008 by Negusse Debela, a computer engineer before he moved into coffee. SNAP runs seven stations across Sidama, Yirgacheffe and the Guji zone, and organises its work around consistency, education and sustainability. Their agronomists have trained thousands of farmers in nursery management, crop diversification and intercropping.

The mill at Chelbesa was built in 2019 in a small hamlet called Danche. Its fermentation tanks are ceramic rather than concrete, chosen to retain heat and give more clarity in the cup. Several hundred smallholders deliver cherry here, most farming between half a hectare and three hectares alongside food crops.

What natural processing does here

For this lot, the whole cherry is dried intact on raised beds rather than being pulped first, and turned regularly over several weeks so it dries evenly and does not spoil. The sugars in the fruit stay in contact with the seed the entire time, which is where the mango and cantaloupe notes come from. It is a slower and riskier method than washing, and at this altitude drying takes considerably longer than it would lower down.

Specifications