Burundi

Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, is a landlocked country in the African Great Lakes region of East Africa, bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Burundian coffee is known for its intense body and sweetness. The high altitudes contribute to often a more nuanced acidity supporting the sweetness and body. This coffee is a beautiful espresso and single-origin filter option. 

This coffee is produced by Gabriel Congera and processed by Jean Clément Birabereye in the Kayanza District of Burundi. Gabriel's farm is 2 hectares, yielding 4000 kgs of coffee cherry on average. 74% of his farm is planted in coffee, other crops include banana, beans, cabbage, and cassava. Processing at Jean Clément's wet mill uses single fermentation for 13 hours. Coffee is dried 20–22 days depending on the weather. The cup denotes flavors of savory chocolate, grass, nutmeg with hints of squash.

Ethiopia Yirgacheffe

Ethiopia, in the Horn of Africa, is a rugged, landlocked country split by the Great Rift Valley. With archaeological finds dating back more than 3 million years, it’s a place of ancient culture and deep history. Ethiopia is known as a birthplace of man as well as the birthplace of coffee.  The Yirgacheffe region of Ethiopia is the most prolific coffee producing area in country. We are proud to offer and exquisite coffee from individual farmer members of the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union This lot comes from a producer named Mesele Haile, whose 12-hectare farm comprises several different heirloom Ethiopian coffee varieties, including Wolisho, Kudhume, and Dega.

Along with several other farmer-members of YCFCU, Mesele Haile has invested in making improvements in his production by building a micromill, and learning advanced techniques to prune and maintain his plants. The addition of a mill has transformed Mesele's business: Where he formerly tendered his cherry to local cooperative mills, now he is able to better control the harvesting, processing, and fermentation of coffees from his land.
Mesele's coffee is picked ripe, depulped and sorted, and then dried on raised beds over two weeks, a longer drying period than usual, due to the fact that the coffees are only spread on the beds at certain times of the day. The slower drying, Mesele believes, contributes to the fruity, sweet complexity his coffee has. The cup flavors hint at a tart lemon and lime with a creamy mouth feel and raisiny aftertaste.

Rwanda

Lake Kivu is our favorite area in Rwanda. The climate of the lake and the volcanic soil come together in some magical way to make deep cherry fruit tones in these lovely coffees. An extra bonus for this specific coffee is that it is certified organic and, outside of Ethiopia, there is very little certified African coffees.

COOPAC is a Fair Trade certified cooperative that began with 110 farmers in 2001, and today has over 2,200 members. COOPAC is committed to environmental and social sustainability in addition to producing high quality coffee. Waste by-products created during the coffee washing process are used to as fertilizer rather than discarded into the lake, and shade trees are distributed to farmers to prevent soil erosion. COOPAC has assisted in the construction of a school, health-care clinics, and roads and bridges in the community, and has a program to distribute cows and goats to the most productive farmers. COOPAC also provides farmers with an agricultural advisor to educate the growers about the latest production methods. In the cup there are flavors of grapefruit and hops with a nutty aftertaste

Tanzania

Tanzanian coffees are grown on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, under the shade of banana trees—truly an exotic location for this East African coffee. Tanzanian coffee is somewhat similar to the coffee of its neighbor Kenya to the North; bright, clean, and aggressively complex. The grading process in Tanzania is also the same as in Kenya, where coffee is graded on bean size, and AA is the largest, followed by A and B down the line.
In the United States, a very popular Tanzanian coffee is the peaberry type, and there are a couple of theories about why that's so. Peaberries seem to have a mystique about them. What's a peaberry? It's when a single bean develops inside the coffee cherry, instead of the familiar two "flat beans." Why so many fans of the peaberry? The theory is that all the goodness of the coffee cherry is in only one bean, rather than split among two. This lot of Tanzania Peaberry is full of body and flavor with hints of heavy fruitiness of it's cherry pulp.