The Lot Gikirima # 019 comes from the homonymous Gikirima Coffee Factory in central Kenya's Embu area.
This microlot is a specialty coffee of exceptionally high cup score and stands out for its classic "berry" profile. It is a perfect coffee for those looking for complex and great classic Kenyans: Lots of berries notes such as raspberries and blueberries, bright, candy-like sweetness, grapefruit.
The Gikirima factory is one of five wet mills under the Kibugu Cooperative Society in Embu, central Kenya. The factory and the cooperative are very helpful to the farmers. They advise them to apply fertilizers at the right time to maximize coffee production on their farms. Farmers manage, on average, 2 hectares and about 300 trees. Most farmers also grow other crops such as passion fruits, corn, beans, and tea.
This specialty microlot is mainly composed of SL-34 and SL-28 varietals, with a minimal amount of Ruiru 11 and Batian. The beans have been selected by size: the batch is graded "AA," that is, it contains beans with a diameter of a quarter of an inch or higher.
The preparation process is the classic fully washed with dry fermentation, typical of several high-quality Kenyan coffees. The dry fermentation is performed using only the cherry juice to ferment the beans before washing them one or more times. The cherries are first picked by hand and then further selected manually to remove the over and under-ripe. They are then processed with a mechanical depulper, which removes the outer skin and most of the mucilage. The beans are dry fermented (water is drained off) in painted concrete tanks. They usually are fermented for 18-36 hours. They are then washed and classified by density, to remove any residual immature, and finally soaked for further 16-18 hours in clean water.
The beans are then dried on hessian mesh mats for up to 1 day, then moved to the traditional drying tables until the humidity is down to a target value of 10-11%. This drying phase can take up to 20 days, during which the beans are turned regularly to avoid any unwanted fermentation and covered during the hottest hours of the day and night. The last step involves dry mechanical processing to remove the parchment. Finally, the beans are vacuum packed and shipped.
Minimum resting period: 5 days for filter extractions.
