Kenya Kamwangi AA
Light Roast - Limited Roast
KENYA
Kamwangi AA is what Kenyan coffee is all about - a rich, round, loud profile featuring blackberry, grapefruit, plum, and brown sugar flavor notes. Careful drying practices and meticulous sorting have reversed the recent decline in Kenyan coffee quality so we are thrilled to have this one on the menu. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
PRODUCER:
2,200 small-holders
ORIGIN:
Ngariama, Kirinyaga
VARIETIES:
SL 28, SL 34, Ruiru 11, Batian
ELEVATION:
1,100 - 1,800 masl
PROCESS:
Washed, Dried on Raised Beds
HARVEST:
November - December 2023
TASTING:
Blackberry & grapefruit, rich
Why We Love This Roast
Hello, Kamwangi AA! We’ve been loving these gems from Kirinyaga the past two years - last year we featured Kamwangi AA and this year we loved both the AB and AA version, so we bought both! AA and AB are just bean size designations; they are not an indication of quality (though you’ll find people who claim that AA always tastes the best). AA coffees are the largest beans - they will not pass through Grade 18 (18/64" diameter) sieve perforations. AB coffees are a mix of size A and size B - none will pass through a Grade 15 (15/64” diameter) sieve perforation.
Kenyan coffee was really fantastic up until the late 2010s but then sadly had a decline in quality for several years. The relatively poor quality coffee was partially due to higher temperatures which made the coffee dry faster, but last year Kamwangi factory and its partners invested in solar dryers, which allowed them to slow down the drying and preserve the complexity and vibrancy of the coffee. Coffee that dries too quickly loses its sweetness and tastes hollow and dull. For more on solar dryers and quality at Kamwangi, see this article from our importer.
Interestingly, this year it does not appear that they used the solar dryers as we have been told that during drying, the coffees were covered in plastic during the hottest part of the middle of the day and again at night to protect them from both the hottest and coldest temperatures. This technique seems to have worked, as the drying times were between 12 and 20 days (somewhere around two weeks is the target, and the drying times during the poor quality years were sometimes as fast as just four to seven days!) and the flavor profile is indeed complex and vibrant. We taste plum, blackberry, grapefruit, and brown sugar - this coffee is rich, full, and round.
This coffee is hand-sorted for unripe and overripe cherries by the farmers before processing. After de-pulping, the coffee is fermented for 24-36 hours in a fermentation tank under shade, then washed and dried on raised African drying beds with the aforementioned plastic covering.
