Cameroon Kouoptamo Cooperative

Cameroon is an interesting origin in the Specialty Coffee terms. For starters, this is West African coffee, not East African like most other arabica offerings such as Kenya, Zimbabwe, Rwanda. And a large percentage of Cameroon coffee has traditionally been robusta, grown in all provinces except the north, while arabica is mainly produced in the high altitudes of the west, northwest and east. The western highlands of Cameroon, where much of the coffee is grown, averages about 5,000 feet above sea level and has two distinct seasons, the rainy season and dry season, which benefits quality arabica. This lot is from the Grassfields Cooperative, located in the Bamenda Plateau region. However, this lot is from small holder farms in Kouoptamo, not too far from the mountainous Bamboutos region. The cooperative produces both wet and dry process coffees, and this is the former. They depulp coffee into tanks where it ferments for up to 36 hours to break down the sticky fruit mucilage, which can then be washed away with clean water. Coffee is dried on raised beds for around a week to 10 days. Most of the coffee is grown around 1000 to 1200 meters, and you see a lot of Java and Jamaica varieties planted in Cameroon. I want to mention that we've found a few lentils and seeds in this coffee in previous years. It's not all that uncommon in coffee since they often share the same drying patio. Some mills are better than others at getting it out, but it does come with the territory. We removed what we spotted by hand, but expect that one or two may make it through our own screening every now and then.