KENYA cranberries ∙ blackcurrant ∙ sour cherry
Tasting Kiambu has changed everything we had previously thought of the relationship between specialty coffee and micro or nano lots. Although Kiambu is the blend of peaberries grown on 13 different Kenyan farms, it is definitely the most unique Kenyan we have tasted this season.
K
enya is a country that offers intensive, wellbalanced coffees with hints of berries. Sixty five thousand tons of coffee is grown in Kenya every year and more than half of this yield is supplied by about seven hundred thousand small farmers. The unique flavour of Kenyan coffees can be mostly attributed to two things: the wet process used throughout the country and the two main coffee variants grown on the farms. The SL28 and SL34 are arabica variants that were first bred by the Scot Laboratories. While SL34 is a highly drought resistant type and produces great yields, SL28 adds the rich, unique characteristic flavour to the Kenyan coffees. Kiambu was produced by Komothai Farmers Cooperative Society (FCS) founded in 1959. Although it was closed due to corruption charges in 2013, the society is now up and running again, supplying the best coffees grown in Kiambu, a micro-region near Nairobi. 20-25% of the 500 tons of green coffee that is produced every year is specialty coffee.
With its ten thousand farmers, 78 permanent employees and 13 processing stations, the Komothai FCS is one of the biggest organizations. The organization accepts coffees grown in really small quantities that would not normally be processed on their own. At Komothai, however, the coffees from these extremely small lots are mixed and processed in one batch after carefully sorting the beans according to their size, matching moisture content and flavour profile. Our coffee grown at the altitude of 1850 and 1950 metres was processed using the wet methodjust like almost all coffees grown in Kenya.
Our coffees taste the best when extracted with water of the proper hardness* range. In order to highlight the best flavour of our roasts we recommend having 5 to 10 days of resting period after roasting, but consume within two weeks of opening. Enjoy!
Kiambu consists entirely of peaberries. Unlike the regular flat coffee beans, these beans are round. As it is quite a rare occurrence that only one of the two seeds in the cherries gets fertilized, peaberries only give about 4-7% of a regular harvest. Since the nutrients in the fruits are not shared by two beans, peaberries are more dense and harder in structure than regular, flat coffee beans adding a special flavour to the coffee. * Total hardness: 50 –175 ppm CaCO3 (2.9–9.8 °d), ppm CaCO3 (2.2–4.2 °d), pH: 6.5-8.0.
alkalinity/buffer: 40 –75 (The SCAE Water Chart)
photo by the CCS
KIAMBU