Uganda Black Honey Muramba

This coffee is from a washing station in Bugoye town, part of the Rwenzori mountain range in Western Uganda. The station was built a few years back as part of a quality focused effort aimed at building smaller lots that focus on regional distinction. This is more challenging than you might think. Historically, Uganda was a supplier of large commercial blends, where volume, not quality, was the main objective. In contrast, these stations offer a competitive price as well as assistance to attract local farmers to deliver their cherry where it is centrally processed and separated into standardized grades. The Bugoye site sits at around 1200 meters above sea level, and while you see coffee growing in the area, most of it comes from the hills above between 1500 to 1800 meters. It's quite rural, and the higher hillside farms lack roads, leaving farmers to transport their harvest by donkey on foot. Farmers grow a mix of varieties, with SL-28 being quite common, along with SL-14, Costa Rica 95 and Catuaí (many are supplied by the owners of the washing station). This is a "Black Honey" process coffee, which gets its name from the dark coloring of the drying coffee. Unlike the wet process method, honey coffees are not pulped of all their fruit, and left to dry with some amount of mucilage intact to the seed. It starts off translucent, but over the 1-2 weeks starts to oxidize, taking on a darkish hue. Generally, the more mucilage the darker it gets, but it's not always true. This process was popularized in Costa Rica, and has filtered out to many other producing countries, particularly those with water scarcity, since it requires very little water to produce. Leaving the fruit intact can lead to fruit flavors in the cup, which we taste a little bit here, though still on the subtle side compared to full natural (dry process).