Caramel, butter toffee, honey graham cracker, restrained notes of black tea, candied orange peel, and ample acidity.
Tucked away in the Nyamasheke region of Rwanda’s Western Province is the Kanyege washing station site. At 1870 meters above sea level, Kanyege rests in the hills just above the Kanzu site, and the coffee they are processing comes from farms as high as 2000 meters. Farmers in this region are growing older Bourbon cultivars, and while Kanyege produces mostly wet process, this is a honey process lot.
Honey processing is where they remove the outer cherry, but leave much of the sticky fruit intact to the coffee bean for the drying phase. This process method tends to impart some fruit in the cup profile, as well as rounded body. They are floating cherry and sorting by hand in order to remove the majority of underripe coffee before processing. They also employ hand sorting at the drying beds removing any defects they see. Honey process coffees produce a lot of chaff during roasting, and are generally a little darker during roasting. This makes it a little tricky to judge roast color.
Cupping Notes
The dry fragrance has an understated sweetness of red honey at City and City+ roast levels, with some puff pastry type baked goods. The wet aroma brings out a caramelized sweetness of browned sugar and butter, along with honeyed accent notes, toasted marshmallow, and a faint hint of brewed black tea. This cup is all about sweetness, and Kanyege manages to tick off a lot of different types of sugary sweets as it cools. Notes of Kraft caramels, butter toffee, and raw honey were noteworthy in light roast, and the aftertaste had a nice honey graham cracker note. There’s a bit more going on as the cup cooled, top notes like black tea, and candied orange peel feed into cup acidity, and impact the finishing aroma.
- Origin: Rwanda
- Region: Nyamasheke, Western Province
- Producer: Kanyege washing station
- Altitude: 1870-2000m
- Cultivars: Bourbon
- Processing: Honey Process
- Sourcing: Sweet Maria’s