Description
Garry’s coffee special features three of our more interesting coffees. Higher acidity, interesting processing, this bundle is leaning towards more exotic coffee tones.
*Bundles change over time. You will get the listed coffees at the time of order. *
A pound each of:
Ethiopian Guji Org. Natural Gr. 1 – Kayon Mountain Shakiso
Fresh Kayon Mountain has become a tradition around here, marks one of our favorite times of the year, new Ethiopian season!
Beautiful coffee and screen. The Kayon Mountain Coffee Farm is 500 hectares with about 300 hectares planted in coffee and has been owned and operated by Ismael Hassen Aredo and his family since 2012. It is located 510 kilometers south of Addis Ababa, and the property crosses the border of two villages—Taro and Sewana—located in the Oromia region, in the Guji zone of the Shakiso district of Ethiopia.
Ismael oversees a staff of 25 permanent full-time and 300 seasonal employees, and the farm management offers free transportation services as well as financial support for building schools and administration buildings for the community. The farm competes with a nearby mining village for seasonal workers, so Ismael and his family tend to pay higher wages to their pickers in order to incentivize them returning year after year.
Tasting Notes:
Clean, bright, sweet with a very diverse flavor set. Stone and darker fruit, citrus & floral, and spiced chocolate tones are the main flavors one can see in this cup, either accentuated or muted depending on roast level. Nice jammy body will be seen in the medium to borderline dark roast mark. Very dependent on roast – lighter roasting gives much more of the citrus, red-fruit with just a hint of a spicy chocolaty factor, a much dryer finish. Darker roasts produce much more of a bakers chocolate cup with a hint of a strawberry like fruit note and good sweetness, far less acidic. A very enjoyable cup from light to dark.
Roasting Notes:
Classic natural processed, fairly even roasting (one can see a couple shades but they are close to each other) with high chaff. We liked it best right around a medium roast – not as bright or floral but developed a real nice fruit versus chocolate profile. Many lighter roast fans will like to take it lighter – 2 out of 6 here who tried it did like the lighter roasts better – super dark roasts will get pretty edgy but have very nice aromatics and a strong chocolaty smoky cup profile.
Rwanda Huye Mountain Top Lot – Bourbon Natural Processed
A very fun and tasty natural processed coffee from Rwanda, a different spin on tastes, more similar to an Ethiopian or Yemen Mokka coffee.
Huye Mountain Coffee is a private washing station established in 2011 to provide farmers in the region with access to international markets and buyers of specialty coffees.
Around 1,330 producers deliver their freshly picked coffee cherries to 26 collecting stations around the Huye community, where a truck visits daily to collect the farmers’ coffee during harvest season. This unique coffee comes from the Huye Mountain in the Huye District, in Southern Rwanda and grown above 1,900 meters. The natural process employed at Huye Mountain involves meticulous cherry selection and hand sorting prior to drying. Drying is done on raised African beds for between 14 and 28 days, depending on the weather, and the coffee is turned regularly.
Tasting Notes: We thought best served in the medium roast range, but tasty from light to dark. A very sweet cup at any roast point. Lighter roasts have some stronger citric/floral acidity, a little hint of a grape-skin like fruitiness and a spiced (herbal) chocolate undertone. Medium roasts build a much creamier cup profile, just a hint of crisp floral upfront that fades into a strawberry like fruitiness, balanced with a spicier chocolate dark tone. Dark roasts themselves are a bit flatter but still very sweet edged, hardly fruity but makes up for it with the fuller bodied more robust chocolate and spice notes.
Roasting Notes: A bit higher chaff and slightly uneven roasting being natural processed but we would still consider it an easy to roast coffee. A refined natural processed, not old world crazy two toned like some. Shoot for a classic light to medium roast if you like more fruit and floral tones, any signs of second crack, cool it out right away. For more robust and creamy chocolate tone, take it darker, just touching second crack. If the cup is too sharp tasting, give it a couple day setup, gets nice and smooth.
Papua New Guinea – Jiwaka Arufa – Natural Processed
Natural Processed coffees are very different from washed processed. Fruity ferment like tones will dominate the cup. Sweet, slightly floral with some citric acidity. This is a wild old world example of a natural, similar to Bali Kintamani Natural but with more acidity upfront.
From its earliest introduction to present day, the arabica gene stock in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is considered to be one of the country’s strongest natural assets, not to mention one of the best-preserved Typica lineage variety sets in the world. And these delicate genetics clearly thrive in PNG’s highlands, which are some of the most virgin and fertile on the planet.
Between World Wars I and II, Australian settlers would establish more and more large coffee estates across the Eastern, Chimbu, Jiwaka, and Western highland provinces. As commercial exports ramped up, more indigenous Papuans would adopt coffee as a cash crop alongside their traditional economies, in most cases processing at home and selling humid parchment to traveling collectors. For hundreds of thousands of rural farmers coffee would be, and still is, the very first and only source of western currency. To this day expert-level cultivation knowledge largely remains in the possession and experience of PNG’s plantation owners. Remote smallholder coffee tends to fall short of its potential, receiving only scarce quality interventions from ambitious millers and exporters.
Tasting Notes: Good cup from light to dark but our favorite roast point was right in the middle, a city+ (medium) roast. The aromatics are very fruity and slightly fermenty, but only hints will come through in the taste. Lighter roasting will have a sweet edge, fuller body & stronger citric acidity accompanied with unique red fruit tones (think hibiscus & fruit skin), balanced with an earthy semi-sweet malt like contrast. Pushing the roast a bit gets more chocolaty and fuller bodied, still incredibly sweet but just a hint of fruit, less sharp and less earthy, cuts out most of the citric edge. Darker roasts have a strong bakers chocolate tone, slightly smoky with an almost cherry like red fruit note popping out as the cup cools.
Roasting Notes: If you are not used to roasting old world naturals, be prepared for a bit of uneven roasting and high chaff. Normal for an offering like this. All in all, easy to roast, just have to watch it a little closer for lighter roasting, make sure there are not too many golden/pale colored beans before hitting cool or dumping. If shooting light, you may want to flick anything still pale or golden colored or risk a little grassy tone. Tasty from light to dark but for most, keep it before 2nd crack. A wild cup, giving it a couple days to rest before drinking will give the cup better definition.
This unique natural lot is made possible by Monpi Coffee, a miller and exporter based in both Garoka and Mt. Hagen, the two main coffee industry hubs in PNG’s highlands. Monpi also partners with independent washing stations and occasionally commissions specific processing styles in collaboration with participating growers. In this case, Monpi worked with the Kindeng Wet Mill to sort and separate exemplary cherry prior to the typical depulping phase, and directly dry the fruit as a full natural, a process that takes a full month in Jiwaka’s cool highlands. Once the drying is complete, the coffee is transported to Monpi’s Kagamuga dry mill for hulling, and finally fully milled for export in Garoka.
In addition to value-added processing programs like this one, Monpi also maintains a business unit dedicated to supporting smallholders directly through training and community support. Called Sustainability Management Service (SMS), the team oversees trainings throughout the year that address agricultural practices, gender equality, youth inclusion, climate change mitigation, and environmental preservation. The Kagamuga dry mill is also developing a coffee nursery to provide new plantings to local farmer networks, to support productivity for their farmers for the long term.
To learn more about PNG’s unusual coffee industry, check out our recent blog article “The Wild West of Coffee Production.”
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