Gatugi AA
Region
Karima Hill, Nyeri
Country
Kenya

Roasted for Filter  |  Lime curd, cola, cassis

Jammy sweet with well-defined, ripe fruit flavours. Look for notes of cassis, vanilla and lime curd leading to a cola bottle finish. 

A new Kenyan coffee for us, we were bowled over by the flavours in this AA selection from the Gatugi factory and are thrilled to be able to share it with you.

The Farmers

Around 750 smallhold coffee farmers are responsible for growing the coffee that ultimately is processed and collated at the Gatugi coffee factory in Kenya’s famed Nyeri region. With an average of 250 trees planted on around 0.5 acres the most popular cultivars being tended to are SL28 and SL34, with Batian and Ruiru 11 planted amongst these offering more resistance and hardiness. A coffee tree here produces between 5 and 10kg of coffee cherries each season, and farmers will hand pick and deliver their harvest to the wet mill for processing. The region boasts phosphorus rich, red volcanic soils and altitudes up to 1,890 metres.

The Washing Station

Gatugi coffee factory was built in 1979 near Karima forest. It is part of the Othaya Coffee Farmers’ Co-operative Society, which was registered 23 years prior in 1956. Once coffee cherries are delivered to the mill during harvest they are first hand sorted and floated to remove any less-than-perfect fruit. They use a traditional depulping machine to remove the cherry skins before the mucilage covered parchment coffee is fermented for up to 72 hours, allowing the native microbiome to break down this pectin-rich sugary layer. After scrubbing and washing the clean parchment spends a further 24 hours soaking This aids in homogenisation across the coffee, and in all likelihood involves a second, milder fermentation stage. Soaking, in our experience, improves the stability and longevity of the coffee’s cup profile. Once fermented, washed and soaked, the clean parchment coffee is slowly dried on raised beds to an optimal moisture level before it is stored in GrainPro bags prior to milling at the Othaya FCS’ own dry mill in Gatuyaini.

The FCS

Othaya FCS oversee 19 different coffee washing stations in Nyeri. Their mission statement is “Empowering Coffee Farmers Through Value Addition”. When they first established themselves in the 1950s it comprised 250 members, which has now grown to over 15,000. They maintain a nursery of coffee plants to provide to their contributing smallhold growers to aid renovation and renewal of their coffee plots. They hold agronomical seminars and workshops as well as provide equipment and fertilisers to their members. Factory managers receive regular training to ensure quality control procedures are clear and protocols are being adhered to, so they can maintain their reputation for producing top quality lots that receive premium prices. Broader social work extends to construction of footbridges and holding free medical screening camps at Aga Khan hospital.

PRODUCER

750 members of Othaya FCS

HARVEST
January, 2024

PROCESS

Traditionally depulped and fermented up to 72hrs, fully washed and soaked 24hrs, dried on raised beds.

CULTIVARS

SL28, SL34, Batian, Ruiru 11

REGION

Karima Hill, Nyeri

COUNTRY

Kenya

ALTITUDE

1,700 to 1,890 metres

ARRIVAL

July, 2024

 

2kg | £68.00
Gitesi by Gahizi
Region
Karongi, Western Province
Country
Rwanda

Roasted for Filter  |  Kalamansi, allspice, floral honey

Fresh and juicy, with top notes of kalamansi and other fragrant citrus. A marzipan sweetness develops into allspice and honey in the finish.

Please join us in thanking Aime Gahizis and the smallholder coffee producers of Karongi as we mark twelve years of working with delicious coffee from Gitesi washing station.

The Producer

Aime is always hospitable and positive when we visit Rwanda. We stay in close contact throughout the year to hear how things are going at the washing station. As well as buying and processing coffee cherries grown by the smallholder farmers in the surrounding hillsides, the Gahizi family also tend to their own small farm, from which this specific lot hails. They have a wormery which they use to make an organic fertiliser spray, which also helps to limit the spread of leaf rust. Every year they are buying more land and planting more coffee, with over 20,000 trees now producing on their own farm. Their mature trees produce an average of 5kg fruit per year but can produce upwards of 20kg.

Cows kept at the station provide milk and fertiliser for their own trees, and through Aime’s social work they donate dozens of cows each year to farmers in the local area, as well as spray pumps for fertiliser. They also donate seedlings from their nursery of over 10,000 plants to neighbouring farmers and run workshops to teach them about tending to other food crops as well as coffee.

The Washing Station

The water used for producing washed coffees comes from a natural spring. After being used for processing the coffee it becomes full of particulates and enzymes, needing to be filtered before being reintroduced into the local water table. At Gitesi they collect water from the washing channels as well as run off from the mounds of coffee pulp (which breaks down to provide more compost for their trees) and first hold it in a tank. The mucilage settles and is separated off to be added to organic fertiliser whilst the water passes through lime and EM (effective microorganisms). Subsequent stages use molasses, holding tanks, charcoal and fine gravel to filter the water before it finally passes through a bed of vetiver reeds, re-oxygenating it. This filtration system is highly advanced and is held up as an exemplary model for other washing stations to work towards.

A couple of years ago they built new washing and grading channels at the station as part of their renovations. Typically they will process around 80% of their coffee volumes as washed coffee, with 20% naturals being done on a case by case basis for certain clients.

Their Approach

Aime sees the work at Gitesi as much more than simple crop husbandry and coffee production, doing amazing work within the neighbouring community. We asked him for a message that we could pass along to the people drinking coffee from Gitesi and he replied with the following, that we haven’t the heart to shorten:

“The Gitesi Sector is the land of our grandfathers, it’s where even my father was born. But as you know, because of Rwandan history we grew up outside our country, and we came back in 1994 after the genocide and liberation war. Upon our return we have found in our land no one among our family members, all of them were killed in the genocide. We are now living and working with those who killed (or their children) our relatives. What motivates us is the reconciliation between the survivors of genocide of those who participated in genocide in our sector, now we are working together at the washing station, sharing everything in peace. Our plan is to continue changing the lives of our people at Gitesi both socially and economically.”

PRODUCER

Aime Gahizi

HARVEST
June, 2024

PROCESS

Floated & eco-pulped, dry fermented, fully washed and soaked, dried on raised beds.

CULTIVAR

Red Bourbon & RAB C15

REGION

Karongi, Western Province

COUNTRY

Rwanda

ALTITUDE

1,750 to 2,000 metres

ARRIVAL

November, 2024

 

2kg | £46.00
Maidy Bocanegra
Region
Bruselas, Pitalito, Huila
Country
Colombia

Roasted for Filter  |  Apple, demerara, mango

Sweet and perfumed, with golden apple and honeysuckle flavours. Look for brown sugar, nougat and hints of tropical guava in the finish.

We’re excited to welcome back a new lot from Maidy Bocanegra, a coffee producer from Bruselas in Colombia’s Huila region. Maidy is fairly new to the world of specialty coffee but we have tasted several new outturns from her farm, Finca Los Limones and are committed to keep purchasing from this really promising producer. 

Maidy Bocanegra and her husband, Alberto Mendez, moved to Pitalito in 2020 to establish their coffee farm, Finca Los Limones, named for the previous use of the land to cultivate limes. They moved from a background of cattle farming in Cauca having been displaced by guerrilla warfare. 2 of the 3 hectares are planted out with various cultivars of coffee, including Castillo, Pink Bourbon and Papayo (a rather unusual Ethiopian cultivar with elongated, papaya-shaped coffee cherries). With help from Caravela’s PECA (agronomical training team) program they are evolving their farm’s infrastructure and protocols to maximise the quantity and quality of their harvest.  

The couple rely on help from their parents and siblings for the daily tasks of running the coffee farm, as well as employing extra help of around 10 pickers during the main harvest, who mostly come through family connections. Once the selective manual picking is done they are first ‘resting’ the coffee cherries in the reception tank for a day, a protocol sometimes dubbed ‘reposado’ which can augment the perceived sweetness or ripeness of the fruity characteristics in the final cup, most likely due to the fruit begin to macerate slightly and soften, perhaps making depulping easier and kick-starting the following fermentation stages. They use a traditional iron depulper to remove the outer fruit skins and let the mucilage covered parchment coffee ferment in open air tanks for between 24 and 48 hours depending on the climate. The coffee is then fully washed and starts the drying process in a shaded area under the floor to ‘drain’ on a mesh material. After the initial moisture has drained off the coffee spends between 15 and 20 days slowly drying in a solar tent on mesh to achieve an optimal moisture content. 

They hope in the future to develop their drying areas, plant more interesting coffee cultivars like Ombligon and to be able to hire more help on the farm, particularly during harvest. Their message to coffee consumers around the world is to reflect on the labour-intensive nature of coffee production and stress the importance of environmental stewardship. We’re grateful to Maidy and her family for embarking on their journey into coffee production and pleased to be able to work with them via our sourcing program with Caravela. 

The Exporter 

Typically, Caravela operate an 80/20 model, working with a vast majority of smallholders and a minority of farmers with large coffee estates. In their latest impact report 87% of their producing partners had farms of less than 5 hectares in size. More than half of the producers they worked with were visited by their PECA team, and in Colombia alone they are working with 1,746 producers across 52 communities. 

As regards their PECA program, they have said the below:

“Coffee growers are the heart of our business model, without them we could not maintain and sustain this value chain. They are responsible for producing the best coffees that delight us every day. The Coffee Growers Education Program (PECA) has developed a symbiotic relationship between coffee growers and Caravela since we’re always learning from each other. For many years, we have accumulated experiences throughout experimentation and work that provides tools to empower and educates coffee growers, resulting in consistent high-quality coffees.”

PRODUCER

Maidy Bocanegra Nieto at Finca Los Limones

HARVEST
September, 2024

PROCESS

24hr reposado, depulped, dry fermented 24-48 hours, fully washed, slowly dried on mesh in solar tent. 

CULTIVAR

Castillo & Papayo

REGION

Bruselas, Pitalito, Huila

COUNTRY

Colombia

ALTITUDE

1,790 metres

ARRIVAL

December, 2024

 

2kg | £56.00
Aricha
Region
Yirgacheffe, Gedeo Zone
Country
Ethiopia

Roasted for Filter  |  Muscat grape, lemon cake, jasmine

Luscious top notes of muscat grape and jasmine elevate a sweet cup, with flavours of frangipane and lemon drizzle cake.

Around 700 smallholder coffee farmers in the Aricha kebele have contributed towards this lot. The varieties being grown are Wolisho, Dega & Kurume, which are tended to completely organically in a semi-forest system. Each farmer has between 0.5 and 2 hectares planted with coffee with 1,500 to 2,400 coffee trees per hectare. Each tree only produces around 3kg of coffee fruit per season, which is delivered on foot or by mule to the washing station. Coffee is grown under shade amidst secondary crops like bananas, maize and other cereals, which not only provides food but improves the root structure on the farms which can protect against erosion. 

The Washing Station:

The cherry reception and processing is undertaken under the watchful eye and scrutiny of Henok Admassu, the mill manager. Henok and his children have been working at this mill with Snap Coffee in a vertically integrated fashion since late 2021. After depulping the received coffee cherries using an Agaarde disc pulper the coffee is fermented under cool water in ceramic tiled tanks for 72 hours, before washing and grading in long channels. The seeds are effectively graded by density in these channels and will be graded again once fully dried when the quality is refined at the dry mill using vibrating density sorting tables. It makes for a reliable product for us to roast, as the seeds are small and compact yet very dense, allowing an efficient transfer of heat through each seed and the entire batch. 

Snap Coffee:

Snap Coffee was established in 2008 by Negusse Debela Weldyes and the group are responsible for the running and operation of several coffee washing stations which feature in our coffee range each year. Snap oversee the processing facilities but also take on the task of dispensing agricultural knowledge to their contributing farmers. Steps such as tiling fermentation tanks to enable better cleaning, as well as implementing strict drying protocols, have gone long ways to improving the clarity, cleanliness and longevity of the coffees’ characteristics. They are committed to recycling waste by-products from coffee processing at each of their stations where they have also built schools and provided them with computing equipment from the other arm of their business which is in electronics. They have improved the roads to streamline access to the washing stations and have built health clinics to provide access to better healthcare for their contributing farmers as well. Lots from the most recent harvest have been dry milled at Snap’s own processing and warehousing facility. This has afforded the group even more control over the final exportable product that we get to work with, leading to improved consistency and uniformity.

We spent several days cupping through lots at Snap Plaza in Addis Ababa last February, and were able to connect with Negusse and his son Amanuel who has taken on an operational role at Snap Coffee. Later in the year Amanuel came to visit us in our roastery and we were able to show him all of processes we undertake to ensure we handle Snap’s, and other producers’, coffees with respect and care. 

Origin: Yirgacheffe, Gedeo Zone, Ethiopia

Producer: Henok Admassu & 700 smallholders

Processing: Traditionally depulped & wet fermented for 72hrs. Fully washed, graded & dried on raised beds. 

Variety: Kurume, Dega & Wolisho

Altitude: 2,000 to 2,150 metres

Harvest: January, 2024

Arrival: July, 2024

2kg | £50.00
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