Kenyan coffee production is divided into smallholder cooperative societies, small estates, and large estates. More than 50% of production comes from cooperative societies. The individual factories are responsible for production, management, and overhead costs, while the cooperative society monitors financing and sells the coffee.

Factories typically have about 1000 farmers delivering cherries and give a small advance payment at delivery. The better and well-managed factories are able to give more than 85% of the sales price back to the farmers. Small estates, while having the potential to produce amazing coffees, often blend their coffees randomly due to their smaller production capacity.

Large estates, mainly located on the outskirts of Nairobi, use dense planting, high maintenance plant treatment, and irrigation to produce up to 1.5 kg of greens per tree. While good coffees can be found among the estates, in general they lack the flavour intensity and complexity found in other Kenyan coffees.

Cherry delivery takes place at the factories or at collection centres. When the farmers arrive to the point of delivery, they normally have to empty their bags on the floor (on a cover) to sort out unripe, overripe and CBD infected cherries. A supervisor inspects the cherries before they are weighed and the farmers get a small up front payment for the delivery. The delivery from every farmer is registered and they get a receipt for the amount.

This will be the base for their right to payment after the coffee is sold. Some farmers are organised in groups or associations to be able to cooperate on investments for soil inputs and necessary equipment for farming.

After the coffees are weighed, they go into the main cherry hopper above the pulper. Some wet mills have a separate hopper for the low grades, such as under and over ripes. When they start the pulper, the cherries gravitate into the machine. They normally use disc pulpers, such as old three-disc Agaarde or similar brands. As long as the discs are changed from time to time, they can work perfectly well.

It’s also important to adjust the pulper to remove the pulp (fruit) properly without damaging the parchment. The parchment flows from the discs with water, allowing the parchment to be separated by density. The densest beans will sink and are pumped straight through a channel to the fermentation tank as P1 (parchment 1), the semi dense will go to a separate fermentation tank as P2. The floaters, P3, are considered as low grades and will normally go straight to the drying tables. Processing methods are more or less similar for most cooperatives or large estates.

After pulping, the coffees are dry fermented (water is drained off) in painted concrete tanks. They are normally fermented for 18-24 hours. Many factories do intermediate washing every 6-8 hours, meaning they add water, stir up the parchment and drain it again. When fermentation is completed and the mucilage is dissolved, the parchment gets washed in washing channels and graded again by density. The lighter beans will float off and the remaining, dense parchment will normally be soaked in clean water for up to 24 hours.

After soaking, the coffees are skin dried on hessian mesh mats for up to one day. This is to quickly eliminate the moisture on the surface of the parchment. After a day, the coffees are typically moved to traditional drying tables. The coffee is then dried on a surface of jute clothing or a shade net on top of the wire mesh. The parchment is constantly moved as they sort out defected parchment and beans.

The coffee has to be covered with plastic during the hottest periods of the day, as well as during the night. The drying time varies between 12 and 20 days, depending on the weather and rainfall. The moisture target is 11-12%. In Kenya, there is also a tradition of intermediate conditioning, depending on the producer’s approach and drying table capacity. Some producers take the parchment into conditioning bins, during what they call “the black stage”, when the coffees are stabilised at around 16%. They can be conditioned for some weeks before they are placed on the drying tables again, to finish off the drying.