In this privileged job that we have, tasting and buying great and exciting coffees, there are moments where we just have to say yes! This coffee had to be bought as soon as water first touched the grounds. You just know when you know.
Mill: Kenya–Kiandu AB Mill:
KianduFactory; Kiandu Farmers’ Co-Operative Society
Varietal(s):SL28, SL34&Ruiru 11
Processing: Fully washed& sun-dried on raised beds.
Altitude:1,700 to 1,900 metres above sea level.
Ownership :Approx.1,500members
Town: Tetu & Nyeri
Region: Nyeri County, Central Kenya
Country: Kenya
The average area under coffee: under 1 hectare on average
Cup potential: Aromatics: Black tea & Currants. This coffee comes straight off the blocks like a charged horse at the beginning of the Grand National. Straight at you, Blackcurrants and Oxford Marmalade fruit sugars. This so intensely powerful yet compellingly sweet and juicy, that just opens up to infinitely more complexity on cooling.
Recipe: 55-70g per litre.
This AB lot was made up from the many smallholder members of the Kiandu Farmers’ Co-operative Society. The KFCS ( as we’ll call it from here) operate independently. Formerly they were part of a group of factories that they have recently left.
Kiandu’s KFCS’s motto is Urumwe, Utheri na Utonga (Unity, Transparency, and Wealth), and the group’s purpose is to cooperate in order to alleviate poverty amongst the members of the organisation. The group’s factories are well-known for producing high-quality coffee and have, in fact, won several Kenyan coffee awards for lots they have produced.
The mill operation is a very standard one for a coffee factory in Kenya, where the system works for everyone, when high quality, ripe cherries are delivered to the factory on the day of picking.
