December, 2008

Specialty Estate Coffee of the Month - Rwandan Cyangugu

Our coffee journey for the Christmas month this year is quite an exciting voyage; to the tiny coffee growing country of Rwanda. Not well known for being a large producer of Arabica coffee, this is quite a find for Yahava.

Coming from zero processing plants in 2000, to now having more than 70 production stations (with an exporting production of nearly 2,500 tons annually), the past five years have seen a phenomenal growth in the Rwandan coffee industry.

Similar to the growing patterns of other countries, families across Rwanda will grow small plantations on their farms and then sell onto larger companies. The plants start to flower in September to October and then are ready for picking in the following April/May.

Working with coffee you never really know what you may encounter around the corner!! A soft brown coloured 70kg bag with a large blue stripe down the middle arrives at our shop, I take the scissors and proceed to remove the string lining at the top of the sack. Upon opening, something quite unique is revealed; a small, rich, ripe green Arabica bean, the look of which is nothing I’ve seen before….

It had been plucked 12 months earlier from a small plantation near Kigali in central Rwanda at an estimated altitude of 5000 feet above sea level. With an average rainfall of between 900 to 2200 mm per annum, along with the deep, rich, African soils my expectations were very high.

When placed under the roasting microscope I had decided to slow roast this variety, opening the beans core and releasing the exotic, caramel sugars inside. Once cooled my initial finding was a roasted beef like aroma, and upon grinding I found a vanilla, “cinema perfume” like fragrance was exposed. When tasting the coffee through several different methods I concluded it to have a sweetened dark toffee flavour, which left an almost moisturised feel over the palate. This could possibly be the best Speciality Estate to date!?

Overall this month’s Rwandan coffee will leave Santa feeling ‘eclipsed’, (sorry sir). So send off an order and prove me wrong!!! And from all the Staff at Yahava KoffeeWorks have a lovely Christmas and Happy New Year folks.

ENJOY!
The KoffeeDude