Sasaba

The Sasaba washing station sits at 1,800 metres above sea level in the Guji zone of the Oromia (Oromiyaa) region in the south west of Ethiopia and is doing some fantastic work, it was noted that when visiting the station everything was impressively organised, there’s a great amount of potential to produce amazing coffee. Tsegaye the owner of the mill is mostly focussing on natural processing this year however next year he’s going to look closely at both washed and natural coffees, exciting times are ahead for Sasaba.

The red cherries are produced in the area surrounding the washing station and are collected from late September until December, processed on-site and fermented for about 48-72 hours before they are placed on the drying beds, their natural coffees are usually dried for 15-20 days. About 350-400 drying-beds are present at the washing station. The smallholder farmers that sell their cherries to Sasaba washing station (the exact number of farmers selling their coffee to Sasaba is not known) usually own around 10-15 coffee trees. Besides coffee they grow subsistence crops like maize, surgum-eans and peas.