Kenya Nyeri – Othaya FCS – Chinga AA Top Lot

Description

Mt. Kenya, at the helm of Kenya’s Central Province, is the second tallest peak on the continent of Africa and a commanding natural presence. The mountain itself is a single point inside a vast and surreal thicket of ascending national forest and active game protection communities. The central counties of Kenya extend from the center of the national park, like five irregular pie slices, with their points meeting at the peak of the mountain. It is along the lower edge of these forests where, in wet, high elevation communities with mineral-rich soil (Mt. Kenya is a stratovolcano) many believe the best coffees in Kenya, often the world, are crafted.

Tasting Notes: A crazy clean, fresh and bright Kenya coffee. Light to dark this will make a tasty cup. Full of citric and floral tones with small hints of a fruitiness, good body with some buzzy acidity that will tingle your tongue. Lighter roasts do have some lemony goodness but it’s crisp and defined, not quite mouth puckering. Hints of black tea spice with a small chocolaty factor are present even at lighter roasting and balance out the cup nicely. Sweet edged with some hints of a fruity factor between the lemony floral front end and chocolaty spice undertones. Medium roasts and smooth and accentuate the chocolaty factor, muting up most of the acidity, a very easy to drink cup. Darker roasts were equally as tasty and drinkable, retains it sweet edge and was not too roasty.

Roasting Notes: Beautiful prep and easy to roast. A Kenyan top lot is all about keeping some of the brighter tones. With this lot, to see it shine, a nice light/medium roast is the best bet. Dark roasts will be pretty awesome as long as you like strong coffee, but doesn’t quite scream Kenya, a bit mild darker roasted but still very tasty.

Nyeri is perhaps the most well-known of these central counties. Kenya’s coffee is dominated by a cooperative system of production, whose members vote on representation, marketing and milling contracts for their coffee, as well as profit allocation. Othaya Farmers Cooperative Society, the umbrella organization that includes Chinga factory, is one of Kenya’s larger societies, with 19 different factories and more than 14,000 farmer members across the southern Nyeri region. The Chinga factory was founded in 1960 and is located between the Ruarai and Chinga rivers in far southern Nyeri near the Murang’a county border. Both rivers originate in the Aberdare mountain range, to Nyeri’s west, whose cool air and precipitation is a contributor to Nyeri’s coveted coffee terroir.

Kenya is of course known for some of the most meticulous at-scale processing that can be found anywhere in the world. Bright white parchment, nearly perfectly sorted by density and bulk conditioned at high elevations is the norm, and a matter of pride, even for generations of Kenyan processing managers who prefer drinking Kenya’s tea (abundantly farmed in nearby Muranga county) to its coffee. Ample water supply in the central growing regions has historically allowed factories to wash, and wash, and soak, and wash their coffees again entirely with fresh, cold river water. Conservation is creeping into the discussion in certain places–understandably in the drier areas where water, due to climate change, cannot be as taken for granted—but for the most part Kenya continues to thoroughly wash and soak its coffees according to tradition. The established milling and sorting by grade, or bean size, is a longstanding tradition and positions Kenya coffees well for roasters, by tightly controlling the physical preparation and creating a diversity of profiles from a single processing batch.