Burundi

Nkonge Washed

A crisp berry-driven lot from producers on the Nkonge hill, processed by Long Miles.
  • This washed lot has everything a great washed Burundi should, with crisp berry notes balanced by a concentrated sugary sweetness
  • After a difficult harvest in 2019, Long Miles were able to return to separating lots by hill in 2020.
  • We’re excited to again share coffee from the Nkonge hill.
  • Look for: Redcurrant, Honey and Rooibos.
Kr. 135,00

About the coffee

Nkonge Washed

This is a washed coffee from the Nkonge hill, processed at the Heza Station. Heza uses a similar double fermentation process to that employed in Kenya, where the cherries are first depulped and fermented without water for around 12 hours, before water is added and the coffee is soaked for a further 12 hours. After this, the coffee is ‘footed’ to wash away the sticky mucilage layer attached to the outside of the coffee seed. This involves the workers stomping on the coffee in the tanks for 15-20 minutes while singing traditional Burundian songs, before the coffee is moved to washing channels to be rinsed in clean water, and graded for density before travelling to the drying tables. Coffee is then dried slowly on raised beds, aiming to reach a moisture level of 10.5% in 20-30 days. In this lot this leads to typical Burundian fresh currant character, balanced by concentrated sugary sweetness.

Look for:

Redcurrant, Honey and Rooibos.

Story behind

Nkonge Hill

Nkonge is one of the hills that delivers cherry to Long Miles’ Heza station, alongside Gitwe and Mutana. The station sits at 1960 masl, and due to this the harvest here normally starts around two weeks later than Long Miles’ lower altitude station at Bukeye. This high altitude also leads to impressive views over the Kibira rainforest to Rwanda, which have given Heza its name; Heza means ‘beautiful place’ in Kirundi. Heza was built in January 2014, and now serves nearly 2,000 individual farmers. Heza also helps local farmers by supplying trees from a coffee tree nursery with over 15,000 seedlings, and the intention is to plant these all over the war-torn Burundi countryside in years to come.

Technical
Data

Producer Nkonge Hill Farmers
Region Kayanza
Altitude 2000 masl
Varietal Bourbon
Process Washed
Harvest May 2020

Process
Washed

The washed process involves completely removing both the cherry and the mucilage from the outside of the parchment with the use of friction, fermentation and water. After being harvested, the coffee cherry is then sliced open by either a metal or a sharp plastic blade. The two seeds (also known as beans) are pushed out of the cherry, which leaves the seed with mucilage as their outermost layer. It is essential in the washed process that all mucilage is removed from the seed which leaves only the flavor that developed in the cell structure of the seed prior to processing.

About La Cabra

A focus on raw material

If we don’t feel that a coffee suits our style or what we like to present, we simply won’t buy it. Sometimes this leads to issues in green buying; we have to pay very close attention, to a level of green quality that will support this approach, and to how this will develop over the life of a coffee. We are required to focus heavily on the freshness of coffee, both green and roasted, to avoid introducing taints into our cups. We always use clean and fresh water, of an ideal mineral content to present the coffee in its best possible light. Once we have the correct roasting profile, water, and coffee age, the act of brewing is much more simple. A wide variance in brewing parameters can still produce delicious and transparent cups. It is also important to note that this is not always the most consistent approach. The coffee is laid completely bare, so any flaw with the raw material is clearly on show. We could often develop some coffees slightly more, to make them more approachable or easy to work with, but wavering from our philosophy like this would compromise our commitment to complete transparency in coffee.

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