Our videocast: In My Mug
Episodes
Sunday Oct 19, 2014
Sunday Oct 19, 2014
Last year I took my first trip to Kenya. Not to meet producers but rather to get an insight into how the market works, and how we can improve the quality of what we buy from Kenya. But this is one project that did emerge from the visit.
Much of Kenyan coffee comes from cooperatives, which means it's tough to go to visit a person or build a long term relationship. But speaking with the coops leaders and washing stations it is possible to get something interesting and work on projects.
The Chinga mill is located near to the town of Othaya just east of the Chinga Dam, it's approximately 5km south west of the town in the Nyeri country part of the country.
The mill has some 783 members (587 male and 195 female) and each member only owns a small piece of land of an average 0.3 acres. They harvest the coffee themselves then sell it to the mill, who process and send the coffee to the government auction.
The project part of this coffee was we asked them if they would naturally process a batch for us, to which they kindly agreed as long as we promised to buy it regardless of the final cup. So it's a small lot to make sure that we didn't mess up, we also spread the risk with two different quality of coffee lots, this is an NH we have here being screen 15 or above. They thought I was crazy as only the poor quality coffee in Kenya gets naturally processed, and couldn't understand why I wanted only the best quality processing this way. But they did it, and luckily for us it worked out better than we could have hoped.
NH and NL are new, and basically invented grades, as these are good cherries selected and then natural processed. They will not be official grades as yet (& probably not as this is the first time we've seen them used), and are not linked to the similarly named MH and ML grades - NH and NL (traditionally used for mbuni heavy and mbuni light) were created and used so the packers, mill operators, etc would have some degree of familiarity with the natural processed nature.
In the cup this is a smoked blackcurrant, but with a wood-chip and pipe tobacco finish. You can tell it wants to be one thing and wants to be another, a confused coffee that's clean, but with big base notes.
Name: Othaya Chinga
Affiliated to: Chinga Farmers Cooperative Society
Province: Nyeri
District: Othaya
Average rainfall: 1,200 - 1,500mm
Altitude: 1,795 m.a.s.l.
Drying Method: Sun
Harvest Method: Hand picking
Varieties: SL 28 SL 34
Coordinates: 0°34'45.4"S 36°55'35.2"E
Soil: Rich Volcanic Loam