Kenya Premium Nyeri – Torch Coffee/Rui Ruiru – Anaerobic Natural Processed

Description

Our buddies over at Torch Coffee (Yunnan, China), who masters of funky natural processed coffees, started working with a small coffee factory in Nyeri with the aim of producing boutique natural and anaerobic natural coffee offerings. After many test batches, this is their first anerobic natural top lot. A beautiful & very exotic, different tasting coffee. If you have not had anaerobic natural offerings before, be in for something new. The cup is filled with sweet fruity and slightly boozy tones. Highly rated but a taste that will split the market due to the fruity/boozy qualities coming from a high fermentation level.

Nyeri is perhaps the most well-known of the 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. This specific coffee is brought to us by the dedicated smallholder farmers delivering to the Ruiruiru factory, which operates under the Rutuma Farmers Cooperative Society in the Mathira North area of Nyeri County. The region is fed by rivers that originate in the Aberdare mountain range, to Nyeri’s west. The cool air and precipitation from these mountains are a major contributor to Nyeri’s coveted coffee terroir, providing not just legendary volcanic soil, but the ideal, stable climate needed for the slow, controlled drying required to perfect this premium anaerobic natural coffee.

Tasting Notes: A complex and very fruit-forward cup that transforms beautifully across roast levels. With lighter roasts, expect bright, punchy notes of orange, red berry jam, and a sharp lemon acidity. At a medium roast, the cup balances out nicely with an intense dark chocolate and mild passion fruit undertones. If taken darker, it maintains hints of tropical fruit and acidity while emphasizing deep cacao and intriguing spicy notes. Hints of an oaky, barrel aged boozy tone can linger on the tongue across the roast levels, brandy like many would say with the more fruit forward cup profile.

Roasting Notes: An easy coffee to roast, though it requires some awareness. Due to the anaerobic natural process, it produces a higher amount of chaff and absorbs heat differently than a traditional washed Kenya, often developing quickly through First Crack. For light roasts, we recommend giving it a slightly longer development time to avoid underdeveloped, nutty flavors (like almond or peanut). A Medium roast is our sweet spot to perfectly highlight the fruity notes and the beautiful interplay with its acidity. While darker roasts build a heavier body, the fermentation notes can become overly intense, so we recommend not pushing it too far into dark territory. Setup time is pretty critical to these anaerobic coffees: generally best between day 5-15.

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.

Conservation and more new wave coffee tastes are creeping into the discussion in certain places understandably in the drier areas where water, due to climate change, cannot be as taken for granted. While for the most part Kenya continues to thoroughly wash and soak its coffees according to tradition, this unique lot from the Ruiruiru factory pivots brilliantly into an Anaerobic Natural process. By fermenting the intact cherries in oxygen-deprived tanks before meticulously drying them whole, the producers bypass the heavy water usage while creating a profoundly complex profile. Still, the established milling and sorting by grade, or bean size, remains 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.