Ethiopia Organic Agaro Kenisa

Kenisa station is a coffee processing site run by the farmer's cooperative union we buy from in Agaro, who also manage Duromina, Nano Challa, Kedamai and others. "Kenisa" is the Oromifa word for "bee", and symbolizes the hard working people of the region. This region happens to produce some of the most incredible white honey we've tasted in Ethiopia, so the name is particularly fitting! The Kenisa station has registered more than 300 members since starting up a few years back. Initially, they set out on their own but lacked access to getting their coffee to the international market. The Agaro Union is well situated in this respect and is connecting them to a much wider network of buyers (lucky us!). We visited the site last January and the cleanliness and organization were impressive. They employ a water conserving Penagos 2500 to depulp the coffee and the machine looks brand new. We found the coffee from Kenisa to have a stone fruit flavor characteristic common to coffee from this region, most prominent when roasted light, and vibrant too. I noticed quite a few latent 'snaps' at the end of 1st crack making degree of roast a bit difficult to judge by sound alone. If you are shooting for a light roast, I would err on the side of caution and pull the roast 1:30 or so after 1st C begins and adjust from there (try 1:00 past 1C in a Behmor if cooling in the roast chamber).