Kenya – Kagunyu

This unique dry process lot comes from the Kagunyu Factory (“factories” = wet mills that are organized as cooperatives), part of the Rumukia Farmer Cooperative Society in Karatina area of Nyeri county. While we tend to mostly buy wet process Kenyan coffees, known for clean and bright flavors, we’re also drawn to fruity dry process lots like this. The cup profile showed a lot of stone fruit character, and heady spice notes, like woody Chai tea. It’s quite a contrast to the other Kenya’s on our site, and I recommend it to those who enjoy dry process coffees from Ethiopia (or really anyone who enjoys wilder, unrestrained flavors). The altitude is 1600+ meters above sea level, and growing areas in the fertile foothills of Mt. Kenya and Aberdare ranges. Most farmer members have on average only 250 coffee tress: a “garden” more or less. Again, in Kenya coffee “societies” the farmer’s plots are so small, they are measured in numbers of trees, not in area of land as they are in other coffee origins. But this means that co-ops provide micro-management of every coffee tree by the owner of the land, not by a large-scale agriculture operation like the big estates of Kiambu or Thika. The member farmers have the two preferred coffee varieties under cultivation, SL-28 and SL-34, with the vast majority of trees being SL-28.

This natural Kenyan pushes big fruit flavors in the cup that were a bit rustic, like dried fruit, with some more complex fermented notes too. The ground coffee released a scent of dried stone fruit and mango, with a creamy note of fruit smoothie. After pouring hot water on the grounds, the crust that formed at the top of our glasses had a powerful sweetness of caramelized sugars, accented by notes of berry sauce, fermented peach, and woody whole spices. The brewed coffee had very nice stone fruit flavors that came off like kombucha, dried apricot, and peach Italian soda with cream. There’s a very pleasant acidity in the lighter roasts, also reminiscent of stone fruit. As the coffee cooled down a bit, we noted flavor profiles of spiced fruit chutney, orange marmalade, and woody Chai spices. This coffee’s sweet finish was also something that stood out to us, and it does a great job balancing fruit flavors, and some of the rustic cup qualities.