Intense berry flavors and fruit, rich, complex, juicy, floral and elegant, that’s Kenyan coffee at its best! The Kenyan coffee harvest has come to an end. We have some fantastic coffees coming in this spring. First container will arrive early April if everything goes as planned. The prices are slightly down from last year, but you still have to pay up for the good ones. And again it’s totally worth the price!
There was a lot of coffee harvested this year, and some may say quality is down. Last year was a blast, but there is still amazing coffee this year as well. It’s just more coffees to cup through to find the really great ones. Some wet mills had some drying challenges this year because of capacity issues on drying tables. That may be true for the average quality in Kenya, but the stand outs will as always speak for themselves.
There were also some great AB’s this year, and truth is some of the best AB’s we found were far better than most of the AA we cupped from other wet mills or outturns. From the top lots you could find the AA’s to be slightly more transparent and complex, but missing the fruit intensity and juiciness of the AB.
Great stuff will soon arrive from Karogoto factory in Nyeri as well as some N’dumberi from Kiambu and a new discovery from Western Kenya from a wetmill called Kapsokisio. Different in flavor from the central Kenyan ones, but beautiful and elegant with floral attributes, citrus, yellow fruit and rosehip/raspberry notes..
Second shipment will probably arrive a month later, in the beginning of May. There will be coffees from the Kagumoini wet mill, Kangocho and hopefully some Kirinyaga coffee factories. These coffees are not yet ready to be milled and will hopefully be on float end of March/beginning of April.
All these coffees are bought direct and selected by us before they ever reach the Kenyan Coffee Auction. As we have spent weeks, and even months in Kenya all together we have an idea of what profiles and qualities the different Factories (wet mills) are producing. Even if it can vary from year to year we will normally find what we are looking for when we cup through enough separated out turns from the selected factories. First step is to check out what’s going on during harvest, and visit the wet mills and producers. Second is about timing, to be there when all the better coffees arrives at the dry mill. We want to build relationships as well. Coming back to the same coffee factories every year encourage them to continue to improve quality as well as they get proud of their product. We do also pay prices above the general auction price. Producing quality and doing special preparations cost more, and we want to give the farmers incentives to continue working on improvements and quality control.
