Kenya - Gichatha-ini AA #001

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

We’re roasting this coffee to take advantage of the bright, juicy acidity we find in washed Kenyan coffees, going for a pretty light hand with the roaster influence. You might expect to push the brew a little harder as a result.

We recommend resting this coffee for 2-3 weeks before brewing. 

Espresso: 18g in, 48g out, 25-30s, go faster and longer yield for a turbo-style shot with high clarity

For concentrated fruitiness - 65g/L ratio (roughly 1:16) or go for silky juice with a 60g/l (roughly 1:18). We recommend water just off boil for this coffee.

We’re tasting: Apple blossom and raspberry aromatics, very juicy & bright cup with prominent raspberry & pomegranate, great sweetness with a ripe nectarine & assam tea finish.

Traceability

The Story:

Exactly a year ago to the day this coffee was released, we talked about the brewing crisis in Kenyan coffee. An abridged version of events is as follows: regulatory capture resulted in a serious power imbalance, with the prime benefactors multinational corporations able to vertically integrate buying, milling, and exporting Kenyan coffee. As a buyer, that same capture came with better quality programs - an easy way to pick cheap and high quality over ethical, without requiring much local knowledge about the state of affairs.

To break this state of affairs, the Kenyan government threw the biggest metaphorical spanner in the works - a halting, crunching stop to the machine that is Kenyan coffee exports. A sudden suspension of licenses to mill, to buy, to export - a complete bonfire of regulations and bureaucracy without an immediate plan to continue business saw many farmers and factories unable to sell coffee at the most critical time. Parchment required milling at central government mills, rather than the speciality-focused operations that had come through the previous system. In one fell swoop, the pendulum of power had swung to the other side, and chaos and disruption followed in its wake.

To compound the issue with coffee quality issues caused during milling and export in Kenya, the horrific events & suffering occurring in the Middle East and the blocking of sea freight through the Bab al-Mandab Strait has significantly delayed all exports from East Africa. 
To put all this in straightforward terms - the reforms were necessary, but clumsily executed. The precise lot separation and milling that elevated Kenyan coffee beyond the natural provenance of land and cultivar have suffered, and logistics have made it harder still. 

Many buyers we speak too abandoned Kenya this year or significantly curtailed their buying, waiting instead for the dust to settle. We’ve chosen to stick with Nordic Approach and their strict QC protocols - to navigate us through this year and let us keep buying Kenya. 

Our first release comes from a stunner of a station - Gichatha-ini, part of the Gikanda FCS. Gikanda also runs the famous Kangocho and Ndaro-ini stations, and their coffees have graced some excellent roasters offer sheets. We’re almost giddy with excitement at our chance to show our version of these esteemed coffees, though this year should be seen through the context of the regulatory changes. We’ve selected 3 lots that express the variety of flavour we love in Kenyan coffee - from the modern expressions, to the more classic - and this lot from Gichatha-ini talks more to stonefruit, tea-like and lighter (to our palate), cleaner flavours than the dark, rich blackcurrant of Kenyans of yore. Still delicious, and very enjoyable