Rwanda Dry Process Gitwe

The Gitwe coffee mill is located in Rwanda's southern Nyamasheke District. The station itself sits at roughly 1800 meters above sea level, and the altitude of the surrounding farms range between 1800 and 2000 meters. This is a dry process coffee, and only the second one we've bought from Gitwe. Not that we've passed in previous years, but I don't think they produce that much in comparison to their fully washed coffee. The dry process method involves drying the whole coffee cherry with the seeds still intact, fruit and all. Typically, it take twice as long to dry a dry process ("natural") coffee, and can lead to heavy fruit flavors in the cup, along with lower acidity, and body. We found Gitwe had a very nice array of rustic fruits at a wide range of roast levels, and also presented an impressive acidic impression considering the process. Dry process coffees also produce more chaff during roasting, which is something to keep an eye on between batches. If you're roasting in a Behmor, I would limit batch size to around 300 grams in order to avoid chaff smoldering on the quartz burners.  Check out our video tour of the Gitwe washing station from 2019.