About the Bean
About the Bean
Ethiopia Sidama Bombe Anaerobic
Background & Origin
Bombe sits in the Bensa district of Sidama, in the southern highlands of Ethiopia. Sidama is one of the country’s trademarked coffee origins and, since 2020, its own regional state — a dense patchwork of high-elevation farms, washing stations, and local landraces south of Lake Awasa.
This lot is produced by Tracon from traditional Ethiopian heirloom coffee grown around Bombe at about 2,300 meters above sea level. Across the wider Bombe / Bensa area, farms commonly sit in a high band around 1,950–2,350 meters; cool nights, fertile volcanic soils, and shade slow cherry maturation and concentrate sugars and acids in the seed. That high-altitude fruit is the quiet foundation of the cup — before any fermentation design is applied.
Sidama has long produced both washed and natural coffees. Washed lots tend to show citrus and spice with clarity; naturals lean fruitier and sweeter. Bensa, and Bombe within it, has a reputation among specialty buyers for vibrant, berry-leaning fruit when the cherry is ripe and the drying is clean. This lot takes that regional tendency and pushes it further through controlled low-oxygen fermentation.
Natural Anaerobic Processing
Natural anaerobic starts with whole ripe cherry. Instead of heading straight to the drying beds, the fruit is sealed in a low-oxygen environment — tanks, vessels, or sealed containers fitted so carbon dioxide can escape while oxygen stays out. Microbes and the fruit’s own metabolism consume the remaining air; fermentation then shifts toward pathways that favor lactic activity, alcohols, acids, and aromatic esters.
Those esters are why anaerobic naturals often read as wine-like and intensely aromatic: the same family of fruit compounds that shape a sangria’s berry-and-wine perfume. The risk is over-fermentation — if the seal runs too long or temperatures climb, the cup can tip into heavy, muddy, or vinegar-edged territory. Done well, the fermentation is stopped while the fruit is still bright and clean.
After fermentation, the cherries are spread to dry — typically on raised beds, turned regularly so the fruit dries evenly — until the seed reaches a stable moisture. The dried cherry is then hulled. What remains is a natural coffee whose fruit intensity has been amplified without erasing the high-elevation Sidama character underneath.
Why Does This Coffee Taste Like Sangria?
Sangria in the cup is not artificial flavoring. It is the sensory shorthand for ripe berry fruit layered with a soft, wine-adjacent sweetness and aroma — red fruit, a touch of fermented-grape perfume, and a clean alcoholic suggestion without actual alcohol in the brew.
Heirloom Ethiopian landraces already carry dense aromatic potential. Slow ripening at 2,300 meters builds the sugars and organic acids that make berry notes possible. The anaerobic step then amplifies fruit esters formed during sealed fermentation, while the natural dry keeps the coffee in contact with its own fruit pulp. Together they produce the sangria and berry profile: complex, aromatic, and unmistakably fruit-forward — still recognizably Sidama, not a masked or artificial fruit bomb.
In the Cup
The coffee opens aromatic and vivid: sangria sweetness up front, berry through the mid-palate, light in body with bright, lively acidity. Nothing heavy sits on the tongue. The finish is clean and lingering — fruit that stays after the swallow rather than collapsing into bitterness or mud.
As it cools, the berry side tends to lengthen and the sangria character softens into a sweeter, more perfume-like fruit. Clarity holds. That combination — lift, fruit, and a finish that does not dirty the cup — is why this coffee is built for filter, pour over, and AeroPress. Pour over is where the aromatics and acidity have the most room to show.
A high-elevation Sidama natural, shaped by anaerobic fermentation for sangria and berry — designed to be brewed clean.