Rwanda Umurage Red Bourbon – Buf Cafe Top Lot

Description

This coffee comes from Buf Cafe and is 100% Bourbon variety. The famed Buf Cafe washing station is in the mountains near the village of Karaba, in the Ginkongoro prefecture in south-central Rwanda. Buf Cafe started operation in 2000, after funding aid from the Rwandan Development Bank and USAID’s PEARL project.

This is a Red Bourbon coffee from Buf Cafe’s Umurage washing station located in the Huye District, of the Kigmoa sector in the south of Rwanda, sitting at 5,250 feet, very high elevation.

Umurage is Buf Cafés third washing station, along with the Remera and Nyarusiza washing stations. Founded in 2003 by Epiphanie Mukashyaka, Buf Café was founded to grow the specialty Rwandan coffee sector and focus on quality. Epiphanie, who was born in 1959, was widowed during the 1994 genocide – which claimed over 800,000 lives in just 3 months – but chose not to leave her family’s small coffee farm. Instead she set about rebuilding and developing her business and with it the local community. It is estimated that Umurage has 412 registered coffee farmers. Buf Cafe provides lots of jobs for the community, and train farmers in good agricultural practices to improve quality with a focus on sustainability.

Cherries are hand-picked when fully ripe and then pulped that same evening using a mechanical pulper that divides the beans into three grades by weight. After pulping, the coffee is fermented overnight (for around 12-18 hours) and then graded again using flotation channels that sort the coffee by weight (the heaviest – or A1 – usually being the best). The wet parchment is then soaked in water for around 24 hours to stabilize moisture content.

Tasting Notes:
A very cool Rwanda coffee. Clean, rich and chocolaty, medium to full bodied with just a bit higher than average acidity; more buzzy than citric. A juicer body with hints of citric and peach-like fruit balancing with a lovely chocolaty undertone, an accent of spice that lingers in the aftertaste that pulls it all together. A way cool cup. Medium to dark roast preferred to build those nice chocolate tones.

Roasting Notes:
Good from light to dark, super light can pull a little undeveloped tone (stopping right at first crack) but was still quite tasty with the stronger acidity, soft fruit and very sweet cup profile. Medium roasts were our favorite, smooth, semi-exotic and very clean tasting. Works well dark, richer and full of spicy semi-sweet darker tones. Medium to low chaff, even roasting, can darken up a bit quickly in the roaster so make sure you see the expansion in size if shooting for a lighter roast point.