In collaboration with Vadim Key, Wave Coffee Roasters is proud to introduce the first filter coffee in the Key-Coffee lineup — a coffee jointly selected to set the standard for this new collection.
This coffee comes from Mustefa Abakeno, a dedicated smallholder farmer in Ethiopia's Jimma Zone who manages an 18-hectare farm at 2,040 meters above sea level, planted with heirloom varieties sourced from the renowned Jimma research center. Mustefa began processing his own cherry with a simple three-disc pulper before growing into a full exporter in 2018, building the Beshasha wet mill to handle both his own harvest and that of neighboring outgrowers farming 4–10 hectare parcels.
His partnership with the Falcon team in Addis Ababa, deepened by agronomist Harun since 2021, has driven meaningful gains in quality and consistency: shade netting now protects drying beds during peak heat, cherry is selected and tagged into day lots at delivery, and a high-spec Sinar moisture reader keeps parchment at uniform moisture before storage. Harun also grades each dried lot by cupping profile and trains local farmers in good agricultural practices, while trialing stumping techniques with Mustefa and six neighboring farms to renew aging trees.
For this washed lot, ripe cherry is floated to remove immatures, pulped, and fermented for 8–12 hours before being washed clean in channels. The parchment is skin-dried under shade — when cleaning defects is easiest — then moved to raised beds for 7–10 days, shaded with netting during the midday sun to protect delicate mucilage sugars.
Backed by Mustefa's expanding network of purchasing sites — Echamo, Jarso, Badeyi, and Saadi — and his investment in a dedicated natural-processing warehouse in Agaro, this lot reflects a producer whose meticulous, hands-on approach to processing has made him a genuine standard-bearer for Jimma coffee — a fitting foundation for the first filter coffee in the Key-Coffee series.
