Taste Notes: Very bright and somewhat fruity at the lighter roasts; citrus, floral and red fruit balanced with just hint of a herbal nutty/caramel factor. Medium roasts get more balanced, not as citric, building a bigger bodied darker tone. The citric turns a little grapefruit like and the nuttiness turns a bit more chocolaty, maintains a lot of depth between the acidity and herbal chocolate/nutty floral notes . Darker roasts get very strong and semi-sweet, think bakers chocolate with herbal accents. A little smoky and roasty but presents nicely for a more exotic dark roast.
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. The Kiangai processing station, or “factory” as they’re known in Kenya, alone has 950 contributing farmer members, and is one of 8 factories that combined make up the Kibirigwi Farmers Cooperative Society. Farmers belonging to Kiangai average only about 400 kilograms of picked cherry each, the same as roughly 1 60kg bag of exportable green coffee. High FOB prices for great Kenyas, while the norm, are not a panacea, and in Kenya in particular the number of individual margins sliced off an export price before payment reaches the actual farms is many, leaving only a small percentage to support coffee growth itself, and most often this arrives many months after harvest. However, Kenya coffees are sold competitively by quality, which means well-endowed counties like Kirinyaga achieve very high average prices year after year, and many smallholders here with a few hundred trees at the most, along with additional employment or land uses in the highlands, are considered to be middle class.
Kibirigwi FCS, which was first created in the 1960s, oversees the operations of all 8 member cooperatives. The group, as is common to cooperative societies country-wide, has a farmer-elected board with members from each sublocation. Member coops typically draw fresh water for processing from the nearby Kibirigwi river, which is the society’s namesake. The society employs an agronomist for member education and centrally produce over 200,000 seedlings every year to encourage farm renovation. The society also oversees improvement projects voted on by membership, such as tiling the fermentation tanks to make them easier to sanitize between processing batches.
Spec:
- Origin: Kenya
- Region: Kirinyaga
- Station: Thunguri Factory
- Producer: Kibirigwi FCS
- Altitude: 1500m
- Cultivar: SL28, SL34
- Processing: Fully Washed
- Sourcing: Burman Coffee