Rwanda Rwamatamu Hobe Filter
Rwanda Rwamatamu Hobe Filter
We love Rwandan coffee, from the varietal to the vibrance in the cup. It’s our third season working with Bernice and Luke, with the conduit being our mutual friends at Omwani. Historically it has been challenging to buy coffee from producers and smallholder farmers in Africa meaningfuly.
This fantastic lot is called “Hobe” (pronounced Ho-bay) and is our local equivalent of a “cwtch” a friendly greeting embrace. This is our one lot of washed coffee from Rwanda this season. More on this below.
There is a little bit more here
Top Trumps
Lot: Hobe (pronounced Ho-bay)
Country: Rwanda
Region: Western Nyamashake
Processing Station: Rwamatamu
Process: Fully washed
Varietal: Red Bourbon
Altitude: 1800 – 2000 m.a.s.l
Cup Potential 🥣
|Aromatics: Sweet Citrus, caramel| Body: Light-medium | Acidity: Orange and grapefruit|
Orange sugars, open up this sweet brew. Sweetness like apricots and a dark chocolate finish lead to brown sugars and grapefruit. The sweetness is persistent and more like marmalade at times than coffee.
If you are a fan of all things clean and bright this will not disappoint in a V60.
Farm Stuff
Multiple-day lots at Rwamatamu are assembled into bigger lots, which is a fantastic effort. When you take three areas, each producer’s daily lot is processed separately and collectively into a sum of saleable lot sizes. This is a lot of work.
This season, unbeknown to me, Benoir experimented to reduce the amount of work in creating multiple small lots. Fewer big lots were made using his many years of experience.
On our first cupping of pre-ship Rwamatamu coffees, I fell head over heels for Hobe. It’s the biggest single-washed lot of coffee I have bought and is (coffee) perfection. I was a little nervous at first but had encouragement from Bernice almost immediately. Being part of this chain allows more things to happen and people to grow.
Rwamatamu is a farm and a mill. Initially, both were launched in 2015 aiming for financial gain and contributing to the fight against poverty in rural communities through harvesting coffee. The farm at Rwamatamu has 20 hectares of coffee production, and the other coffee they mill and export is from local cooperatives and small producers. 80% of their employees are women. Their goal is to build healthy relationships with the community based on common values and goals. This is done by committing to a regular purchase of beans and investing in the growth of employees.
How are you brewing this? Feel free to share this with us on @JGC Instagram.
