Tariku Coffee Farms

Tariku Coffee Farms grows grade 1 Heirloom coffee between 1,900 and 2,150 metres in the Sidama region of southern Ethiopia. The operation employs 20 permanent staff and around 600 seasonal workers, with a stated focus on employing women, and runs social programmes alongside the farming: school materials for children from low income families, financial help for workers’ families, and training for local growers who want to move into specialty production and reach national retail.

The cherry is dried whole in the sun as a natural before the green coffee is shipped. Decaffeination happens afterwards, at Coffein Compagnie in Hamburg, using the sugarcane ethyl acetate method: the green beans are steamed to open the cell structure, then washed repeatedly in ethyl acetate derived from fermented sugarcane, which bonds to the caffeine and carries it out. It is a solvent process, but the solvent is a naturally occurring compound found in ripening fruit, and it tends to leave more of the original sweetness intact than the older methods.

About Quo Coffee

Quo is a small roastery in Skärhamn on Tjörn, north of Gothenburg, started by a group of colleagues who had worked together elsewhere in Swedish coffee. They buy on long relationships rather than spot lots, work with several producers they have known for over a decade, and pay attention to the carbon cost of getting coffee to Sweden. They were among the first roasters to join Belco’s sail freight programme.

Brewing it

Decaf green coffee is more brittle than caffeinated coffee and grinds finer at the same setting, so it usually needs one or two clicks coarser than you would use for a regular filter lot, and it extracts faster. Immersion suits it: an AeroPress with a paper such as the Aesir Premium AeroPress filters gives you control over contact time without the risk of a stalled bed. For pour-over, try 15 g to 250 g of water at 92 °C and expect the drawdown to finish sooner than usual. It stays sweet as it cools, which makes it a reasonable evening cup in a larger mug like the Loveramics Egg series.

Coffee details