Esayas Beriso

Esayas Beriso is a coffee producer and washing-station operator in the Hambela Wamena district of Guji zone, Oromia, Ethiopia. His coffee is sold under the place-name Boku (also spelled Buku, and appearing as Buku Sayisa on some lots), grown and collected at around 2,350 metres above sea level.¹²

He is a useful example of how a great deal of Ethiopian specialty coffee actually reaches a bag. He is not an estate owner in the Latin American sense. He farms his own trees, he buys cherry from his neighbours, and he controls the drying — and it is that last part, keeping one village’s cherry separate through processing, that makes the coffee traceable enough to carry his name at all. The same structure shows up across Guji, Sidama and Yirgacheffe.

Story

From a government desk to coffee

Esayas began his working life in Dimtu, in a government office, and moved into coffee gradually. He and his brothers started by collecting cherry from surrounding farmers and selling it on to local wet mills — the buying-and-reselling end of the trade rather than the growing end. He then planted his own trees, and in 2009 he left his government position to commit to coffee farming full time.¹

His wife, Meskerem, is described as central to the operation: she manages harvest operations and oversees the purchase of cherries from neighbouring farms.¹

To verify

When he took over the station — 2009 or 2016? The importer profile above dates his full move into coffee to 2009.¹ A Norwegian roaster’s sourcing sheet instead says he has run the Buku washing station “since 2016” (printed as “2p16”, evidently a typo), and gives his age as 35.³ These are not necessarily in conflict — one could be when he began farming and the other when he acquired or built the mill — but no source consulted says so. Neither date is an official record.

The washing station

Multiple sourcing notes describe Esayas as the owner of the Buku washing station, not only a farmer. One roaster’s sheet sets out the commercial chain in unusual detail: the coffee is developed in a partnership between Isayas Beriso as station owner, the Ethiopian exporter SNAP, and a buyer abbreviated CCS, with CCS holding first right of refusal on the best lots; whatever is left is “offered elsewhere, including to the ECX”.³

That last detail is the whole Ethiopian market in one sentence. The ECX is the state marketplace that grades and anonymises most Ethiopian coffee; lots good enough to sell by name are pulled out of that system before they reach it, and the ordinary ones go in.

Esayas has worked with SNAP as his export partner since 2017. SNAP was founded in 2008 and runs washing stations across Sidama, Yirgacheffe and the Guji zone.¹

To verify

The size of the operation. A single roaster sourcing sheet reports 12–13 hectares of farm, about 5 hectares held personally, annual production of 80 bags, and roughly 400 farmers from the Bule Hora hamlet delivering cherry to the station.³ Those numbers appear nowhere else consulted and come from a retailer-facing document, not a producer registry or cooperative record. Useful as an order of magnitude; not to be quoted as fact.

What he grows and how he processes it

The variety question does not have one clean answer, which is normal for Ethiopia.

	Source	Variety reported	Process	Altitude
1	Importer producer profile1	”local 74158”	Natural and anaerobic natural	2,350 m
2	Coffee database, 7 catalogued lots2	heirloom in 6 lots, 74158 in 1	5 washed, 1 natural, 1 anaerobic natural	2,000–2,350 m
3	Roaster sourcing sheet3	”Dega (JARC)“	Natural	2,000–2,350 m

Two processing protocols are published for his coffee. The natural lots are hand-picked and dried whole on raised beds for 7 to 10 days. The anaerobic natural lots are fermented in dry, shaded barrels for 72 hours (or 120 hours) before drying — sealing the cherry away from oxygen to steer the fermentation rather than letting it run in open air.¹

JARC 74158 is a cultivar released by Ethiopia’s Jimma Agricultural Research Center, and this wiki already logs Boku, Hambela Wamena at 2,350 m as one of its documented plantings. “Heirloom” is not a variety at all — it is the trade’s catch-all for the undocumented local Ethiopian material that makes up most of the country’s coffee.

To verify

Three different variety answers. The catalogue entry lists the variety as “741581” — almost certainly a stray digit on 74158, but it is what the page says.² “Dega” on the Norwegian sheet is a JARC-released line, but a different one from 74158.³ The safest reading is that different lots really do carry different material, since the same catalogue shows washed, natural and anaerobic lots across five harvest years. Do not attach a single variety to “Esayas Beriso coffee”.

To verify

Boku, Buku, Buku Sayisa, Buku Able. The place-name is spelled at least four ways across his lots, and this wiki has already recorded two of the variants independently: JARC 74158 logs “Esayas Beriso, Boku Abel Station” and JARC 74165 logs a separate anaerobic lot from “Buku Able, Hambella” — same district, same 2,350 m. Whether these are one station, a station and its village, or neighbouring places is not established by anything consulted here.

Who buys the coffee

His coffee appears in a coffee database across 2021, 2022, 2025 and 2026 harvests, sold by Sey Coffee, Nowhere Coffee Roasters and Hydrangea Coffee.² The Sey lot is documented in detail on that roaster’s own page here: Esayas Beriso, Buku Sayisa, washed, 2,350 m, heirloom, 2021 harvest, sold at roughly $2.05 per ounce at retail.⁴ A Norwegian roaster and a German one have also released lots under his name.³⁵

That $2.05/oz is a retail price for roasted coffee, not what the producer was paid. The gap between the two is the point of Premiumisation.

To verify

An 87-point score, and what kind of number it is. A roaster sourcing sheet gives a natural lot from the station 87 points.³ That is a cupping score from a commercial sourcing document, not a competition or auction result — no Cup of Excellence, ACE or national auction record naming Esayas Beriso was found in the research behind this note. It should not be read as a competition placement. On what an 87 means, see Coffee scoring and Cupping.

To verify

A 600 kg natural lot. A German roaster’s lot leaflet is cited for a 600 kg natural lot of 74158 from Buku, Hambela Wamena, under the name “ESAYAS BERISO Ethiopia Limited”.⁵ The PDF was fetched here and could not be read — it returned unparseable binary. Nothing on it is confirmed.

To verify

A biography page that no longer exists. A Hungarian roaster’s page is cited in the research behind this note as describing Esayas as a former government official who joined his brothers’ coffee business as a station manager before establishing his own farm in 2009.⁶ That page returned HTTP 404 when checked here. The 2009 date and the government-office background are independently supported;¹ the “station manager for his brothers” step is not.

Related

• Guji — the zone he farms in, and the four sub-region names that do its commercial work
• Ethiopia — the country and how its coffee is traded
• Ethiopia Commodity Exchange — where his non-specialty lots go
• JARC 74158 — the cultivar most often attached to his coffee, and where else it is planted
• JARC 74165 — the other JARC line logged at the same 2,350 m Hambela site
• Natural process · Washed process · Anaerobic fermentation — the three processes his lots are sold under
• Sey Coffee — the Brooklyn roaster that bought his Buku Sayisa lot
• Basha Bekele — the other Ethiopian smallholder in this wiki, and what a competition record looks like when there is one
• Coffee scoring · Cupping — what an 87 is and how it is arrived at
• Premiumisation — why a retail price per ounce says little about producer income
• Sidama · Yirgacheffe — the neighbouring zones with the same station-not-farm structure

Official links

• (no official website found — Esayas Beriso is a producer with no company site or public presence of his own; his coffee reaches the web only through importers and roasters)

Footnotes

1. The Coffee Quest — Boku Coffee by Esayas Beriso, Ethiopia ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. Cherrybook Coffee — Esayas Beriso producer profile ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Maridalen Brenneri — Etiopia (EI), Isaya Beriso ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

4. Cherrybook Coffee — 2021 Esayas Beriso; Buku Sayisa, Ethiopia by Sey Coffee ↩

5. Südhang — ESAYAS BERISO Ethiopia Limited lot leaflet (PDF) — fetched but unreadable ↩ ↩²

6. Casino Mocca — Boku, Esayas Beriso — returned HTTP 404 here ↩