SL-28, SL-34 varieties, washed process
Roasted for filter brewing
Mulberry, honeysuckle, and sugarcane
This coffee comes to us from the Gachatha Coffee Factory in Nyeri, where I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon on my last visit to Kenya.
The factory (as washing stations are known in Kenya) was built in 1963 by the Gachatha Farmer’s Co-operative Society (FCS). The society’s membership currently sits at around 1,000 farmers who grow, pick, and deliver their coffee to the factory for processing.
On visiting, it was great to gain insight into how the society’s management worked to preserve coffee quality in processing, but it was especially enlightening to see the commitment to farmer support and training that the society undertook.
Like most of Kenya, the main varieties grown here are SL-28 and SL-34, with smaller amounts of disease resistant varieties including Ruiru-11, K7, and Batian most likely being included as well.
Cherries are brought to the coffee factory by local smallholder farmers where they’re pulped using a 3 disc pulper, removing the skin and fruit from the parchment layer inside. They’re then dry fermented overnight before being washed and density-graded in channels, before then being brought out to dry on raised beds. If there’s no space on the factory’s 70 or so drying beds, the coffee is held underwater in soaking tanks for around a day.
Beyond providing the infrastructure for processing, the co-op provides farmers with support, training, education and access to farming materials, allowing them to strive for better quality and farming practices. This structure encourages growth and improved quality, resulting in the high quality coffees this region is known for, in turn generating higher value of the coffee on the market and returning better prices to the farmers.
This AA selection from Gachatha offers a rich and complex cup profile of fresh raspberry aromas and tasting of mulberries, vanilla, honeysuckle, and sweet sugarcane.
This is our 2nd year purchasing from Gachatha, and we’ve done so through import partner, Cafe Imports.