Green Coffee Offerings : Africa : Kenya |
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View Our Current Kenyan Coffees |
Upcoming Crop CommentsNew crop Kenya lots are here and we will be moving through them like last year. Expect both familiar names and some not-so-familiar. |
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About Kenyan Coffee
On
a historical note: coffee was introduced into Kenya by way of Reunion
(Bourbon) island at the end of the 19th century. (1893 is sometimes
given as the date). It was brought for local cultivation by the Fathers
of the Holy Spirit congregation, another case of the long and twisted
road that religion and coffee have traveled together!
This map of the Mt Kenya area shows some of the nearby coffee origins (I highlighted the names in yellow). Patrick from Royal has a very informative write-up on Kenyas (.PDF file format) |
Kenya is the East African powerhouse of the coffee world. Both in the cup, and the way they run their trade, everything is topnotch. The best Kenya coffees are not sold simply as generic AA or AB. They are specific auction lots sold to the highest bidder, and heated competition drives the prices up. Their research and development is unparalleled. Their quality control is meticulous, and many thousands of small farmers are highly educated in their agricultural practice --and rewarded -- for top level coffee. In general, this is a bright coffee that lights up the palate from front to back. It is not for people who do not like acidity in coffee (acidity being the prized bright notes in the cup due to an interrelated set of chlorogenic acids). A great Kenya is complex, and has interesting fruit (berry, citrus) flavors, sometimes alternating with spice. Some are clean and bright, others have cherished winey flavors. I am really proud of our consistently excellent selection of Kenyas! It takes a lot of work to sort through the many samples available to find the few that are truly complex, that alternate in the way you sense them to make the coffee more than just your standard, pleasant cup, but a real experience. When we go after an auction lot, 9 out of 10 times we buy the whole thing; it is exclusively ours. While it is possible that the same farm or co-op has more than 1 auction lot (for example, 1 early in the season, and 1 a bit later in the same harvest) I can say with certainty that I cupped them all and bought the better one. It's just a matter of effort and hard work, and when it comes to cupping Kenyas, we put a focused and intensive effort into the auctions during the Main Crop season. Currently, the excellent Kenya auction system and coffee production in general is suffering myriad problems as is all of East Africa. Politically, Kenya, the former model of progress and African Independence, is in disarray. For now, the coffees are still of high quality but if the auction system does not continue to serve and benefit the small farmer co-ops, they will plant other crops instead, or replace the better cultivars (the excellent SL-28 and SL-34 selections) with the disease resistant but poor quality Ruiri 11 strain. I visited Kenya in March 2009, both to a few farms, the Nairobi auction house and the cupping rooms of Dorman's, a big coffee exporter. The entire auction operation is amazingly impressive - over 600 separate lots that are sampled and bid each week! Be sure to look for my travel commentary from Tom's recent Kenya trip, plus a couple hundred new images!There are great images there from the coffee auction house, where nearly all Kenyan coffees that reach the market are traded. I also went back in late 2009 - so check out the travelogues on the Coffee Library page.
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Our Kenya Offerings:
Please refer to our Reference Page for definitions of terms and cupping numbers used below. Check out the Sweet Maria's Coffee Home Roasting Forum for more conversation about home roasting this and other coffees.
| $7.40 | $14.06 | $32.19 | $61.42 | $113.96 |
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It was a very competitive year in the Kenya auctions, and the prices reflected the high demand for a much smaller than average harvest. We found many great coffees from the Kirinyaga district, and were pretty excited when one of the lots, this Karimikui, turned out to be quite large. That means we can offer it for a longer time, and being vacuum packed at origin like it is, you can be assured the green coffee will remain spectacularly fresh. This is an AB preparation, only referring to a slightly smaller bean size, not to the cup quality. In fact, because of the weather patterns much of the Kenya harvest resulted in smaller screen sizes for the coffee, hence many AB-graded lots. In fact, AB lots cupped on par and sometimes better than AA lots from the very same mill outturn (meaning they were the exact same coffee entering the mill, then separated only by the size screening equipment). Karimikui is one of the washing stations (a sub-coop wet mill) of the Rugento Farmers Cooperative Society, which is in the town of Embu. We have bought some amazing lots from this station in the past as well, and I think this ranks up with the best. The name seems so Asian, Karimikui from Kirinyaga! And it is a classic Kenya tongue twister, in name and in flavor!
Caramel and graham cracker sweetness are the main theme of the dry fragrance, butterscotch at City+ roast but more sharp at FC. There is a canned pineapple fruit note, with banana hints; a tropical theme. That carries over in the wet aromatics of the coffee: mango and banana, caramelly sweetness, with a darker (but still a very sweet) toffee tone from the FC roasts. There's a hint of herbal scent on the break. I find this cup very complex because it has several different layers of taste: sweet "sugar browning" notes, tropical fruit, herbal hints (think Riccola), and a somewhat rustic suggestion as well. There is an orange marmalade sweetness, accented with clean mango fruit notes on the lighter roasts. The body is syrupy which pairs well with the caramel-butterscotch sweetness. In the finish, the sweet candied fruit flavors turn toward an aggressive, half-herbal and half-foresty character. It's a classic Kenya twist of the tongue. Some in the trade describe it unfavorably as "sweaty" and some quite favorably call it ... "sweaty"! It adds interest and complexity to the cup, and I find it rindy, and makes for a long fading aftertaste. As the cup cools, the fruits seem more winey, and tropical makes way for a black currant and pomegranate-laced syrup. I enjoy this lot so much because it's not just a simple sweet-fruited dessert coffee. It has much more than that and the longer I taste it, the more adjectives seem to flow.
This coffee is part of our direct trade Farm Gate pricing transparency program.
View Cupping Scores
Archived Reviews
To view reviews for out of stock coffees, visit our Kenya Coffee Archives.
2005-2006 | 2004 -2003 | 2001-2002 | Pre-2000 Tom's Sample Cupping Log | Moisture Content Readings This page is authored
by Thompson Owen and Sweet Maria's Coffee, Inc. and is not to be
copied or reproduced without permission
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