Kenyan Coffee

Kenyan coffee production is known for some of the most meticulous at-scale processing that can be found anywhere.

Firstly, bright white parchment, nearly perfectly sorted by density and bulk conditioned at high elevations is commonplace. Secondly, Kenyan processing is a matter of pride even for managers who prefer drinking Kenya’s tea to its coffee. Thirdly, ample water supply is available in the central growing regions.

This has historically allowed factories to wash, and soak, and wash their coffees again entirely with fresh, cold river water.

However, that being said, conservation is becoming key in certain places. Above all, this is happening in the drier areas where water, due to climate change, cannot be as taken for granted. But elsewhere too. For the most part Kenya continues to thoroughly wash and soak its coffees according to tradition.

Subsequently, the established milling and sorting by grade, or bean size, is a longstanding tradition and positions them well for roasters, by tightly controlling the physical preparation and creating a diversity of profiles from a single processing batch.

How does it taste?

To sum up the cup, this Kenya coffee has a flavor profile that is citrusy, bright, & and clean. All this while also possessing a strong sweetness, classic umami, spice, and pleasant complexity.

This early offering has such a ripe, fruited, & sweet aroma in the grinds. We taste plumcot and grapefruit, accented by mulling spices, ginger, and tropical tartness. Aspects of raw sugars are a bit more potent in the wet aroma, and culminate a steam infused with cinnamon-spiced sugar, demerara, and a red raisin note.

The cup is versatile being both fruit-forward and grabby accompanied by the spiced sugar sweetness. It is yielding some really interesting flavor profiles across multiple brew methods. The sweetness has unrefined sugar sparkles with a sprinkling of cinnamon and clove that make a positive impact on the brewed coffee once its cooled down.

It is pretty well-integrated with the flavors we expect from a Kenyan coffee.

kenya aa coffee dring in the sun on raised bes at kiamugumo.

Kenyan coffee drying on raised african beds in parchment.

Nyeri and Ndaroini Farmers Cooperative Society

Mt. Kenya, at the helm of Kenya’s Central Province, is the second tallest peak on the continent of Africa and a commanding natural presence. The mountain itself is a single point inside a vast and surreal thicket of ascending national forest and active game protection communities. The central counties of Kenya extend from the center of the national park, like five irregular pie slices, with their points meeting at the peak of the mountain. It is along the lower edge of these forests where, in wet, high elevation communities with mineral-rich soil (Mt. Kenya is a stratovolcano) many believe the best coffees in Kenya, often the world, are crafted.

Nyeri is perhaps the most well-known of these central counties, and sits between Mt. Kenya to the north, and the Aberdare mountain range to the West, whose combined climates provide cool air, ample groundwater, and reliable precipitation throughout the year, allowing coffee to be comfortably grown at high altitudes and supporting fully-washed processing throughout the region.

Kenya’s coffee is dominated by a cooperative system of production, whose members vote on representation, marketing and milling contracts for their coffee, as well as profit allocation. For many years Ndaroini was a cooperative that belonged to a well-known Nyeri cooperative society, Gikanda Farmers Cooperative Society. However; 3 harvests ago the cooperative split from Gikanda to establish its own society and is now officially Ndaroini Farmers Cooperative Society, or Ndaroini FCS. Other than organizational independence little has changed with Ndaroini’s operations: its farmer members, as is common throughout Kenya, tend very small, diversified personal plots averaging 1 acre apiece, and typically including only about 200 trees.

Washed Processing

Water for processing at Ndaroini is drawn from the nearby Ragati river and is re-circulated throughout the various processing steps as cleanliness allows for conservation. The biggest upgrade since independence for Ndaroini has been the replacement of their McKinnon disc pulper with a far more water-efficient eco-pulper, the kind of machine that uses friction and water pressure to depulp cherry and loosen the coffee’s mucilage, which dramatically reduces water usage and can also reduce the fermentation time required to clean the seed. Once the parchment is fully fermented it is dried on raised screen beds for 10-14 days, and then bulked and conditioned on site to allow moisture to equilibrate and the flavors to stabilize prior to delivering to the dry mill.

Washed coffee is distinguished by the clarity of the flavors and attributes that it can achieve. During this process, the sugars present in the mucilage are removed through natural fermentation or mechanical scrubbing.

Fermentation can be done by stacking the coffee outside or placing them under water. Doing so allows nature to take its course. After the sugars are removed, the beans then can be taken through a secondary washing to remove any additional debris. Sometimes they are taken immediately to the patios or beds for drying.

During wet processing…

Firstly, the pulp is removed mechanically.
Secondly, the remaining mesocarp, called mucilage, sticks to the parchment and is also removed before drying.
Because mucilage is insoluble in water and clings to parchment too strongly to be removed by simple washing. The coffee must go through some fermentation.
Finally, the coffee can be dried.

The method and supervision of fermentation can make or break a coffee’s final outcome. These coffee cherries were hand sorted by the farmers before they went into production. After their skins were removed the coffee was put into fermentation tanks. Here it was stored at least overnight, then washed, soaked and spread on drying tables.

Once on the tables frequent turning is required until the coffee reaches the desired moisture level of 11-12%. Lastly the coffee, in its parchment parchment gets stored to rest until delivery to the dry mill.