XX3 - Bekele Yutute
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This experimental release will be offered first to 2026 season subscribers; any remaining volume will be made available for public sale at the end of February. Sign up for email notifications for advance notice of the drop.
The third coffee in our wildcard series comes from a Cup of Excellence winning producer in Bensa, Ethiopia processed in an unusual way—fermented in a bag suspended in the cold waters of the river for three days before being dried under shade—presenting clean and complex in the cup with vibrant fruited notes of blue raspberry, melon, cherry and mild oregano.
From Christopher: "I met Bekele Yutute in February 2019 and, in the three years I bought his coffee on behalf of Crop to Cup Coffee Importers, visited his drying stations across Bensa from Kokose to Bombe to Murago.
"Bekele is part of the band of coffee producers that we endearingly referring to as the 'Bensa Boys'—a supergroup of coffee producers and friends who collect Cup of Excellence awards the way some people collect bad habits—and in 2021, Bekele won 5th Place in the Ethiopian Cup of Excellence using a coffee processed at his Kokose drying station just two years after he began producing coffee there.
"With an eye on the markets in Asia and the Middle East—where buyers were rumored to pay two or three times what U.S. buyers were willing to pay—his processing methods took an aesthetic leap ahead of my visit in December 2024. The relatively conservative and low-risk anaerobic styles and shade drying we’d worked on together in previous years, perfectly tailored to the U.S. market, were replaced by long, hot fermentations that produced winey and explosive cup profiles that Bekele knew would be favored by his potential buyers in Korea and Dubai. Visiting a friend’s drying station, he saw something he wanted to try: a bag of cherry held in two layers of Grainpro, suspended in the river, where it fermented for 6 days.
"During my visit that year, I saw various mechanisms for achieving this protocol—from piling GrainPro bags filled with cherry against makeshift dams, to 'shark cages' fabricated from steel to be suspended in the river, to more simple rope-and-bag methods, like the one Bekele saw. He knew that the coffee had been contracted by a buyer in the Middle East—exactly the sort of higher-paying customer he hoped to produce coffee for.
"In this style of processing, water acts to moderate temperatures and slow fermentation—and undesirable rot—resulting a densely fruited, bright cup that often tastes cleaner than anaerobic fermentation performed in barrels and hotter temperatures. But it can also introduce risk: floating unsupervised in the river, the coffee could be stolen or become untethered and spill into the river; it could become contamined by waste in the water source, as rivers in Southern Ethiopia are used for bathing and cleaning as well as to carry away waste; or the fermentation could simply go awry, resulting in a defective cup. This type of experimentation requires access to a clean water source, security, the luxury of time, and either the ability to accept this risk or a buyer willing to share it.
"For his own experiment, Bekele suspended coffee from his highest-elevation station in Bensa, in Murago, in the river for just three days—producing just 60kg of a less-funky but still explosively fruit-forward, bright coffee. Initially contracted on behalf of another roaster at a price of $17 per pound FOB, that first contract fell through as a result of the cost of tariffs, the difficulty of logistics and milling delays—all consequences of the difficulty of handling such a small microlot in a country whose infrastructure is set up to handle lots that range from 30 to 320 bags.
"Aviary was more than happy to accept the lot in their stead as part of our wildcard series and contracted it speculatively ahead of arrival. The result is an amped-up cup that is winey yet clean and complex with vibrant fruited notes of blue raspberry, melon, cherry, hibiscus, an herbality that is like a mixture of rue and oregano, and a candy-like finish."
We anticipate that this coffee will be roasted the week of February 22, 2026
TASTING NOTES: Blue raspberry, melon, cherry, hibiscus, an herbality that is like a mixture of rue and oregano, and a candy-like finish
ROAST: Light, to accentuate the vibrancy of this coffee and present its fruited character as ripe and juicy while mitigating funky tones that may creep in from its fruity character.
ACIDITY: Complex, bright, winey acidity
FUNK: This is the a funkier coffee than Aviary's typical style, but quite clean in comparison to many anaerobic style Ethiopian coffees; moderately funky on the nose, that funk doesn't translate to the cup.
FOR FANS OF: Experimental processing; weird ideas that somehow work; water; award-winners; emergent trends; big, vibrant cups
FARMGATE PRICE: 175 birr per kg plus a second payment of 4 birr
FOB PRICE: $17 per lb
LANDED PRICE: $22.15 per lb including 10% tariff
