Ethiopia - Hamasho Village Natural Archers Lot

Daye Bensa Coffee is the 2022 2nd Place Winner of the Ethiopia Cup of Excellence.

Brothers Asefa and Mulugeta Dukamo started the company with one small office and a single washing station, and the vision to uplift the lives of coffee farming families in their hometown, Daye Bensa, Sidama. While the natural environment at altitudes exceeding 2000 masl was conducive to growing high-quality coffee, enabling infrastructure to process and market it did not exist.

Together with his brother Mulugeta Dukamo, he would find a way to overcome this obstacle by setting up wet and dry mills at strategic locations and, not long after, their own exporting company. Now they have 71 washing stations, 11 dry mills, and three farms, with work in progress to expand to neighboring areas Guji, Bale, and West Arsi.

Hundreds of smallholder farmers in the Bombe Mountains of Sidama Bensa comprise Hamasho Village, where the craft of coffee cultivation is built on generations of endurance and experience. Since they traditionally drink their own coffee, they have an instinct for what high-quality tastes like. The name Hamasho is Sidamic for snake, a cultural symbol of strength that also holds spiritual significance.
With the efforts of Daye Bensa Coffee to enhance this knowledge, Hamasho Village farmers are able to maintain and even raise their crops’ quality and commercial viability. Every 50-100 partner farmers regularly receive information about healthy cultivation practices from a dedicated contact.

Daye Bensa Coffee is one of Ethiopia's Top 5 Coffee Exporters. They supply 7,500 tons annually to 25 countries. Unlike others, they produce their own coffee on this massive scale and operate a relationship-based model with farmers, buyers, and other producers, allowing them to directly influence and improve their coffee's quality.

With Kenean Dukamo, Asefa’s son and second-generation leader, on-board, Daye Bensa looks to build on their COE win by creating a division focused on "intentional coffees.” They are also looking at creative collaborations with outside sectors like the arts or winemaking.

Archers x Daye Bensa

The Archers bond with Daye Bensa goes a long way back. It's also a connection marked by exhilarating milestones, such as: Archers’ first stint at the National Brewers Cup in 2021 where our co-founder and green buyer Frederick Bejo showcased a progressive rendering of Hamasho Village on-stage; our first creative processing collaboration that brought us exclusive Hamasho 192 Hrs and Gatta Warm Anaerobic Archers lots, our inaugural learning adventure at origin when we flew to Ethiopia for the CQI Q Processing 2 The Professional at Gatta Farm, Sidama Bensa, and that epic private cupping event featuring 20 cup profiles expressed by a single Ethiopian variety processed in 20 different ways.

‘Ethiopian heirloom’ is the general term commonly used to identify coffee originating from Ethiopia. It covers two classifications: Jimma Agricultural Research Center (JARC) varieties and regional landrace varieties. JARC varieties were developed and released to improve the productivity and livelihood of smallholder coffee farmers and boost the country's coffee industry.

They are promoted and bred because of their good quality when grown at the recommended elevations, resistance to or tolerance of adverse elements, and adaptability to diverse environments. There are 40+ JARC varieties comprised mostly of pure line selections and a handful of hybrids. Regional landraces, meanwhile, are varieties that propagate in the wild, without regulated interventions.

74158 is a JARC variety whose flavor potential we have grown familiar with in our years of working with Daye Bensa. The first Hamasho Village Natural we tasted and subsequently offered surprised us with notes resembling the Panama Geisha's — intense floral aromatics with fresh tropical and stone fruit qualities.

Archers’ first Hamasho Village Natural was in 2020, which had notes of jasmine, orange blossom, lychee, apricot, and lemongrass. From 2020 to 2022, Hamasho Village Natural has consistently carried signature jasmine and lychee notes, while introducing some delicious variability throughout as well. For example, the crop also expressed apricot in 2020 and 2021, enlivening the profile with a hint of sweet tanginess as well as the invigorating aromatic nuance of lemongrass. Then, in 2022 new fruit notes emerged like blueberries and orange, along with caramel, which gave the cup a certain juiciness and a measure of richness and depth.

Whereas Hamasho Lot 2 Natural expressed the signature notes of jasmine and lychee, alongside the return of orange blossom, and together with amplified sweetness and new layers of intricacy with notes of peach soda, melon, and mandarine, the succeeding Hamasho Lot 7 Natural delivers a sumptuous, dessert-like profile with its peach cobbler note while retaining the lush tropicality of lychee and bright sweetness of mandarin, enhanced by the sweetness and subtle florality of strawberries.

As a Natural-processed Archers Lot this time around, we enjoy the succulent, sweet, and tropical-tinged complexity of berries, stonefruit, and citrus with the delicacy of white florals.