[July 15, 2026]Raw Sugar Roast
Yuya Kosakada is
Cercele Washing Station
Roasted Ethiopian native beans!

A lively and refreshing coffee. Clean, with a juicy citrus note reminiscent of lime, muscat, and grapefruit, combined with a bright impression, and a subtle spiciness that lingers in the aftertaste, this coffee boasts superb cup quality.

The Cercere Washing Station is a washing station owned by Tracon, located at an altitude of 1950m in Cercere, Gedeo Department, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region, which is part of the Yirgacheffe coffee-producing region and part of the administrative division of Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region. They work hand in hand with nearly 1000 local coffee farmers to produce high-quality coffee.

During harvest season, freshly harvested cherries are brought in daily from farms and processed at the washing station, where they are dried and finished into dry parchment. More than 200 people work at the Cercere washing station during harvest season, and the quality is enhanced through the efforts of many people, from selecting the cherries to managing each stage of the processing, to stirring and picking them in the African beds.

In recent years, driven by a greater pursuit of diverse flavors and qualities, we have expanded beyond the two traditional production processes of washed and natural to include fermentation processes such as anaerobic methods. Even in the washed process, we enhance the quality of our coffee by using cleaner water through filtration and improved sanitation of water channels.

In the drying process, we not only used traditional sun-drying on African beds, but also tested and adopted shade-drying using agricultural Hikaru nets as shade. While drying on typical African beds takes about 10 to 14 days, shade-drying extends the drying time by about a week, resulting in a slow drying process of about 20 days. This change in drying time leads to the optimization of not only the moisture content but also the water activity, greatly contributing to the long-term stabilization of quality.

As a coffee-producing region, Yirgacheffe comprises coffee from the Gedeo Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region, and the neighboring Gelenaabaya in the Oromia Region to the west. The Gedeo Zone is centered around the town of Dira, with towns such as Wenago, Yirgacheffe, Kochere, and Gedeb being the main production areas. The elevation ranges from 1700 to 2440 meters.

Washing stations are said to have been introduced to the Yirgacheffe area in the 1970s, and the region is widely known as a major producer of washed coffee in Ethiopia.

Despite being a mountainous region, it boasts abundant water resources, which support the quality of the coffee in this area. Many of the small-scale coffee producers living here cultivate ensete (false banana), their staple food, alongside coffee, along with shade trees such as acacia and African cordia.