Don’t want to suggest that she’s still on the road to discovery, herself… I think she’s altogether arrived ;)

For purposes of coffee nomenclature (or better still, appelation), it’s easiest to think of Sidamo as a province of Ethiopia… though it hasn’t been a single political entity since a new constution was written in 1995 which divided Sidamo (by ethnicity) into Oromia and Southern Peoples.

The historical Sidamo, then, is a vast swath of mountains and plateaus in the south of the country (which is roughly twice the size of Texas.) Within this region lays the town of Yirgacheffe, and growers from all round that town make claim to the Yirgacheffe name… which is generally fair, as probably every one of those growers belongs to a handful of coffee cooperatives organized in and around Yirgacheffe proper.

So, by geography, all Yirgacheffe coffees are Sidamos… by politics, none of them are. ;)

default,
typical batch sizes on our IR-12 range from 12-20 lbs. There is a loss of performance if you go much above 20. Typical roast times are 12-15 mins depending on the bean/profile.

tonx,
i believe you roast pretty fast on the deidrich and still get so even color, do you always roast full drum?

In Ethiopia, Yirgacheffe refers to:

1) a region
2) a coffee variety i.e. yirgacheffe, sidamo, nekempte, harrar, limu, jimma, etc.
3) a city: Yirga Cheffe
4) a Coffee Union: Yirgacheffe, Sidama, Oromia, Kaffa

Many of the coffees are washed, however, some cooperatives do produce unwashed, “sundried,” coffees. For the ECAFE competition, some coops that had never experimented with sundried coffees did so with particular care and attention, producing some amazing results.

While in Ethiopia for the competition, I had the oportunity to visit several coffee cooperatives in various regions and fell in love not only with the beautiful coffees of Ethiopia, but also with the country and its people.