Keramo - Ethiopia

In the cup

🍑 Peach
🌸 Flowers
🍋 Lemon
🫖 Sweet tea

Keramo offers this very particular combination to Sidama’s great washed coffees: intense floral aromatics, a precise lemon acidity, and a sweetness reminiscent of peach tea.

When hot, the cup is lively and delicate. As it cools, it gradually gains sweetness and reveals notes of stewed berries.

The body remains light and silky, giving way to a long, floral, and refreshing finish.

At the top of the Bensa Mountains

Keramo is produced in the highlands of Bensa, in Ethiopia’s Sidama region, one of the country’s most renowned coffee-growing areas.

Coffee trees grow here at over 2,300 meters above sea level, in a mountainous environment where days are temperate due to forest cover and nights are particularly cool.

This extreme altitude significantly slows down the maturation of the cherries. The beans become denser, and sugars have more time to develop, favoring the complex, floral, and bright profiles associated with the best Ethiopian coffees.

Around 1,500 small producers from the surroundings bring their cherries to the Keramo Adara Washing Station.

Keramo Adara Washing Station

In the heart of the Bombe mountains, the Keramo Adara station centralizes the harvests from thousands of small plots cultivated under the natural canopy.

Producers primarily work with JARC 74112, along with various local varieties stemming from Ethiopia’s exceptional genetic heritage.

The station collaborates with Daye Bensa Coffee, one of the most recognized producers and exporters in the Ethiopian coffee scene and regularly awarded for the quality of its lots.

Over the years, Keramo has become a particularly sought-after name among specialty coffee roasters for its extremely floral profiles and great clarity in the cup.

Precise washing for a crystalline cup

After harvesting, ripe cherries are transported to the Keramo Adara station where they are carefully sorted and then depulped.

The coffee then undergoes a wet fermentation of 36 to 72 hours to remove the mucilage surrounding the beans.

Once washed, the coffee is spread on raised African beds for approximately 12 to 15 days.

The beans are regularly turned to ensure slow and even drying.

This washed process particularly highlights the natural characteristics of the terroir: great clarity, precise acidity, and remarkable floral expression.

Deeply Ethiopian varieties

Keramo is primarily composed of JARC 74112, along with various locally grown Ethiopian landraces.

74112 is one of the varieties selected by the Jimma Agricultural Research Center to combine cup quality, productivity, and disease resistance.

Cultivated at very high altitudes in the Sidama mountains, it is particularly recognized for producing coffees with floral, citrusy, and delicately fruity profiles.

A transparent supply chain

This lot is exported by Daye Bensa Coffee and imported by The Coffee Quest.

For this harvest, producers received approximately 134 birr per kilogram of cherries, in a context where prices paid to Ethiopian producers have reached historically high levels.

Our purchase cost before transport was 6.81 USD/lb.

This transparency is part of our commitment to better understand—and better communicate—the value flowing throughout the coffee chain.

Why we love it

Keramo doesn't need an experimental process to impress.

That's precisely what makes it so interesting.

Extreme altitude, Ethiopian varieties, precise fermentation, and exceptional terroir are enough to produce a deeply complex cup.

It's a bright, floral, and extremely clean coffee that reminds us why Ethiopia remains an absolute benchmark in the world of specialty coffee.

As a filter coffee, it reveals all its finesse.

As an espresso, expect something much more explosive: fruity, lively, and intensely aromatic.

Coffee Information

Country: Ethiopia
Region: Bensa, Sidama
Station: Keramo Adara Washing Station
Producers: Around 1,500 small producers
Producer / exporter: Daye Bensa Coffee
Altitude: 2,300+ m
Varieties: Primarily JARC 74112 & Ethiopian landraces
Process: Washed – wet fermentation
Fermentation: 36–72 hours
Drying: 12–15 days on raised African beds
Roast: Light