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Konga Co-op, Yirgacheffe

A washed Ethiopian that tastes like someone steeped a flower garden in iced tea. This is the coffee we hand people who say they don't like coffee that's "too coffee."

Dana Reyes · Head Roaster

Roast notes · June 26, 2026

We've bought from the Konga cooperative every year since 2020, and it's the lot I get most impatient waiting on. Konga sits in the Gedeo Zone of southern Ethiopia, in the hills around the town of Yirgacheffe, where roughly 1,800 smallholder families deliver ripe cherry to a shared washing station. Most of them farm less than two hectares. The coffee grows under shade alongside enset and the occasional fruit tree, at elevations that genuinely earn the word high.

What lands in our shop is the result of careful sorting most roasters never see. Cherries are floated to cull the unripe, depulped the same day, fermented in tile tanks, then washed clean and dried slowly on raised beds for up to two weeks. That washed clarity is the whole point — it strips away the heavier, fruit-forward notes you'd get from a natural process and leaves the tea-like florals standing on their own.

Where it grows

Yirgacheffe is shorthand, at this point, for a certain kind of bright, jasmine-scented coffee. But the name covers a lot of ground and a lot of quality. Konga is at the better end of it: the station has a reputation for tight cherry selection, and the altitude — most of the contributing plots sit between 1,900 and 2,100 meters — slows the cherries down and packs more sugar into the seed. The local landrace varieties, the catch-all Ethiopians call "heirloom," do the rest. Nobody planted these in neat rows from a catalog. They're just what grows there.

How we roast it

Lightly, and with a lot of attention. A coffee this delicate punishes you for rushing the back half of the roast. We charge the Probat a touch cooler than usual, stretch the Maillard phase to build sweetness, and drop the batch about forty-five seconds after first crack — well before any second crack would muddy the cup. Push it darker and you trade the bergamot and peach for generic toast. We'd rather keep the flowers.

Because it's roasted so light, this one needs a few extra days to settle after roasting. We tell people to start brewing it around day four off the roast date and ride it through week three. It's at its loud, gorgeous best somewhere in the middle of that.

What it tastes like

Bergamot first — that Earl Grey lift right at the front of the sip. Then white peach and a little lemon zest through the middle, and a finish that goes soft and floral, like cooled jasmine tea. The body is light and clean, almost silky on a good pour-over. It's bright without being sour, which is the line a light Ethiopian has to walk. If your cup tastes sharp or grassy, your water's probably too cool or your grind's too fine.

It's a lovely iced coffee too, brewed strong over a glass of ice — the florals hold up better cold than you'd expect. What it isn't is an espresso. Pulled as a shot it goes thin and tart; save it for filter.

Founder & Head Roaster

Dana Reyes

Dana started Ferrous & Field on a back porch in 2018 and still writes every roast profile by hand. She has strong feelings about light roasts and the water you brew them with.