One of the most beautiful and oldest traditions in coffee is the Ethiopian coffee ceremony. During thisย lengthyย affair, green coffee gets roasted over an open flame and (traditionally) ground with a mortar and pestle. Those grinds are then brewed three separate times using a boiling pot called a jebena. The ritual is normally led by a woman of the household and is a regular part of both daily life and special occasions.
Here in America, the Ethiopian coffee ceremony is beginning to gain popularity, with restaurants and even some coffee shops providing their take on the ritual, which we have covered previously here on Sprudge. Even so, the availability of traditionally hand-roasted coffee is limited; you either have to seek out your local coffee ceremony or, if youโre more adventurous, do it yourself. Either way, most of the time the resulting coffee quality isย franklyย not very good, at least by more refinedย specialty standards.
Enter Garden of Coffee, a roaster based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which is looking to solve both these problems in one fell swoop. Started by businesswoman Bethlehem Tilahun Alemuโwho was included in CNNโs 12 Female Entrepreneurs Who Changed the Way We Do BusinessโGarden of Coffee offers fully customized, traditional hand-roasted-to-order specialty coffee and ships it internationally.
Garden of Coffee is bespoke in the truest sense. You pick from itsย coffee lineup, currently five sun-dried naturals from various regions of Ethiopia. You choose the roast level from light to very dark. And you even choose which of their master roasters you want to actually roast your coffee.ย Alemu tells me this allows customers to โhave the opportunityย to develop direct relationships with these coffee roasting artists.โ
When I spoke with Alemu, there were 17 roasters employed at Garden of Coffee, with that number expected to rise to 40 in short order thanks to her recently opened cafe. And following with tradition, most of the roasters are women.ย โTheย artisan coffee crafting techniques we use are often multi-generational skills passed from parent to child, most often mother to daughter, and which have flourished here in Ethiopia for millennia,โ she says. โMany of these artisansย are women who had previously never beenย ableย to leverage their immense knowledge of hand-roasting coffee into a profitable livelihoodโฆย I am proud to say each roasting team member is earning on average the equivalent salary to a bank management employee!โ
Once you have made your selection, your coffee is roasted to order on custom ceramic roastersโbased on traditional Ethiopian ceramic cone roasters but โinnovated and improved upon,โ made specifically for Garden of Coffeeโand shipped the same day. My order arrived a week after being roasted, which is no small feat considering the 10,000-mile journey and the often-difficult international customs.
Alemuโs goal is to make sure thatย every step of the processโfrom growing to roasting to packaging and shippingโhappens in Ethiopia. Itโs what she has dubbed โOrigin Trade.โ The benefits, she states, are a lower impact on the environment as well as an โengine for prosperity and changeโ for the growers and processors in her home country.
โOur interests are directly aligned with our farmers and our entire value chain in a way that external actors could never be,โ she adds. โThe valueย created economically by roasting and packaging at originย is immeasurable. Our business model and our location allows us to both pursue the absolute bestย quality coffeesย andย to payย the true premiumsย that these coffees deserve.โ
The end result in the cup is something special. Itโs a unique experience that marries Ethiopian coffee tradition with a modern approach. Admittedly, I am one of those persnickety specialty coffee types, so I was skeptical about the whole endeavor. And the look of the coffee itself didnโt do much to assuage my concerns. It doesnโt exactly have Tim Wendelboe levels of uniformity, especially at the lighter roast levels where there is just less contact time with heat; the coffee is still cooked over an open heat source after all, so it doesnโt quite have the same level of ambient temperature control that a drum roaster possesses.
But even fighting those trepidations, the coffee is quite good. It is sweet, fruit-forward, and has a pleasing, very warm homey-ness to it. Not my home though, one thousands of miles away.
For many, Garden of Coffee provides a new way to look at and experience coffee. By delving into the past, but tailoring it to a modern audience, the companyย celebrates more of the art over the science of coffee roasting. And Alemu doesnโt just do this for theย novelty, but as a means to promote growth in Ethiopia. Or as she puts it, โDoes it make sense to ship our magicalย raw green beans thousands of miles for roasting when we can produce the absolute finest roasts right here using our own talented roasting artisans? We think not.โ
Zac Cadwaladerย is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.ย Read moreย Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.