YA Coffee, a small roastery and cafe tucked inside an Addis Ababa office building, serves only Ethiopian beans and brews every cup in the jebena, the long-necked clay coffee pot, Sprudge reported in July 2019.
Coffee brewed in a clay jebena during a coffee ceremony in Addis Ababa, July 2008 (Irene2005, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) [file photo]
Ethiopia is the only coffee-producing country that drinks more than half of what it grows. Yet a government rule requires coffee above a certain quality to be exported, a policy driven by the need for foreign currency, according to Sprudge. As a result, much of the coffee sold on the capital’s streets is made from low-grade beans, unevenly roasted over a fire and reheated for hours or days.
YA Coffee is run by Dagmawi Iyasu and his wife and business partner, Sara Yirga, who does the roasting. Measuring, grinding and heating each jebena takes about ten minutes, which is quicker than a traditional coffee ceremony but slow for customers used to grabbing a cheap cup. On one quiet Saturday morning, three customers left before their coffee was ready, complaining about the wait.
The owners call the jebena method “slow brew,” because grounds and water heat together for a long extraction that brings out the beans’ flavors. “Ethiopia has over 6,000 varieties of coffee, and with that more than 6,000 flavors. We want to be able to offer you all of those flavors,” Dagmawi said.
Dagmawi, a biochemist by training, carried out what he describes as arguably the first comparative sensory analysis of jebena coffee in 2016, comparing it with coffee made in a moka pot at the Illy University in Italy. International coffee professionals in a blind tasting chose the Ethiopian brew, according to the report.
Sara wrote the charter of the Ethiopian Women in Coffee Association and sits on its board. Dagmawi is also East Africa regional director of Grounds for Health, a coffee-sector organization that runs cervical cancer screening. The couple planned to export roasted beans and start coffee tourism around the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela by the end of 2019, and hope eventually to build a demonstration farm and a coffee and leadership academy. “We want to train the younger generation,” Sara said, “upcoming entrepreneurs who want to be in business of any kind.”
YA Coffee is on CMC Road in Addis Ababa.
Sources: Sprudge