Burundi, Kayanza, Nemba

Plethora of Chocolate notes with a heavy body, soft acidity, and subtle fruit notes. 

We Taste: Milk chocolate, hazelnut, caramelized sugar, toasted coconut. 

Origin: Burundi 

Region:  Kayanza

Farm/Washing Station/Mill- Nemba

Variety: Bourbon

Altitude: 1818 masl

Process Method: Natural, ripe cherry dried on raised beds.

Roast level: Sweet Spot

Roasting Notes:  This is my first Burundi offering. My plan was to develop it as a Medium roast, focusing on the chocolate notes. So when creating a roast plan. I started with my medium natural Ethiopia profile. The first roast was successful. After a few cuppings, I made some subtle changes to the profile to get the best cup out of this green. I added time to the dry phase, I subtracted time from the mid phase, and increased the development phase by 8 percent. This profile created the Chocolate forward cup I was going for. 

Sourcing Notes: Sourcing- This year I under contracted Natural Coffee's. Specifically Ethiopia/East Africa. So as the year progressed I watched the new contracted offerings of these types. This Burundi appeared. The flavor profile and cup looked good and the price was reasonable. So I contracted one bag with a SASNAS contract. When the coffee arrived and I sampled it. It lacked the heavy fruit notes of an Ethiopia but had nice Chocolate notes that I could developed with roasting. So far it's been a nice unique offering and a good seller for retail. 

Coffee Info/Story: Nemba Washing Station is located in the province of Kayanza and was established in 1991. Farmers here own less than half a hectare of land, on average, and in addition to growing coffee, they also grow crops like bananas, beans, yams, taro, and cassava, both for sale and for household use. There are 3113 farmers that deliver to this washing station. Each farmer has roughly 168 trees on about a sixth of a hectare of land.

Due to the small size and yield on the average coffee farm or plot, washing stations are the primary point of purchase for us in Burundi. Unlike other coffee-growing regions in Central and South America where landholdings are slightly larger and coffee-centric resources are more available, most producers do not have space on their property or the financial means to do their wet- or dry-milling. Instead, the majority of growers deliver cherry to a facility that does sorting, blending, and post-harvest processing of day lots to create different offerings.

Since 2006, we have cupped coffees from more than 50 washing stations in an attempt to pinpoint those with the best practices, cleanest cups, and most high-quality nearby farms. While the logistics of buying coffees from Burundi are extremely challenging, we love the heavy figgy, fruity, and lively coffees we find here—they remind us like a Malbec, with a firm support of acidity.

Burundi microlots are selected out of the daylots created by various centralized washing stations, basis cup quality. Because the average farmer in Burundi owns 1/8–1/4 a hectare of land, many smallholder farmers will deliver their fresh cherry to a washing station in order to be sorted and processed; microlots, then, are blended lots comprising coffees from many producers that express exquisite coffee, but are not generally traceable to the individual producers.

Like many of its neighbors in Africa, Burundi produces microlots almost by default. Each farmer owns an average of less than even a single hectare and delivers cherries to centralized depulping and washing stations, SOGESTALs (Sociéte de Gestion des Stations de Dépulpage Lavage), and it may take more than one producers’ delivery in order to create a lot.

This purchasing style makes it nearly impossible, if not completely impossible, to arrive at single-producer, single-farm, or single-variety lots. Instead, coffees are typically sold under the appellation of the washing station. (In Kayanza, there are 21 washing stations, including familiar names to Cafe Imports’ offerings page: Gackowe, Butezi, Gatare, and Kiryama.)

Depending on the leadership and management at the stations, both private- and state-run, the attention to detail in the processing makes a big difference. Meticulous sorting, fermenting and washing are necessary to create quality and uniformity among the coffee. The typical processing method in Burundi is somewhat similar to Kenya, with a “dry fermentation” of roughly 12 hours after de-pulping, followed by a soak of 12–14 hours in mountain water. Coffees are floated to sort for density, then soaked again for 12–18 hours before being dried in parchment on raised beds. -Cafe Imports