This Gatomboya AA is classic best — black currant juice, crisp and Grapefruit, white nectarine, Floral and Crisp but yet complex sweet. This is a quite heavy bodied coffee that has sweetness to match.
Tasting Notes: Black currant, Grapefruit, Rhubarb Jam, crisp , Complex and sweet
Aroma: Floral & Herb spices ,Lemon
Cupping: Floral, Black currant, Bright, Sweet and complex
Country: Kenya
LOT: Gatomboya AA
REGION:Nyeri
ELEVATION: 1750-1900 masl
VARIETALS: SL28 & SL34
Q Score: 88.5
PROCESSING: 72 hour washed process; dried on raised beds for 8- 12 days
Brewing advice: Filter
Use a 1:15 brew ratio using the V60 brewer from Hario, aiming for a TDS of 1.35-1.45
About This Coffee
This is our first year that we're able to work with this phenomenal AA selection from Gatomboya Factory is located in Mathira Division , Nyeri County.
Nyeri County is located in the former Central Province of Kenya, about 150 kilometers north of Nairobi and shares its borders with five other counties; Kirinyaga to the east, Meru to the north east , Laikipia to the north ,Nyandarua to the west, and Muranga to the south.
The name Nyeri comes from colonial time. Towards the end of 1902 , the British were looking to enforce their influence. They put up a post close to Mt Kenya on a little hill the Kikuyu called Kia-Nyiri though their mission encountered strong resistance from the indigenous Kikuyu warriors. It is on this hill that the current Nyeri County is built around.
Gatomboya Factory is part of the Barichu Farmers Cooperative Society. Barichu FCS comprises of Gatomboya, Gaturiri, Karindundu and Karatina. Gatomboya has around 1,800 active members with around 540 ha under coffee. Gatomboya produces around 1,235 MT of cherries annually. The factories are run by a factory manager who reports to the society's secretary manager.
Gatomboya is one of the best paying factories in the country. Gatomboya is named after the main water source in the area.
Process Method
The ripening of the cherry is closely monitored and when the time is right the red cherry is hand picked into buckets early in the morning and carried to the wet mill.
The harvested cherries are splayed out on a patio at the wet mill in the afternoon light, with underipes, overipes and any foreign object being removed before the mass of round red cherries are tipped into the hopper above the pulping station.
Clean water (wet processing) from River Gatomboya is drawn up and poured into the hopper on top of the heaped cherries, funnelling them down through a polished chute into the pulping house where the outer fruit is removed between two rotating abrasive slabs
As the now exposed coffee beans tumble out of the pulper into a channel of water, the floating beans are skimmed off, and the sinking denser beans pass out through a hole in the bottom spilling into the fermentation tanks were they spend the night.
The next day the coffee is handled to see if the sticky sweet mucilage has broken down, leaving a rough parchment coating, once "the feel" of the coffee meets the wet mill manager's approval, water will be poured into the tanks to thoroughly wash the beans.
Once washed, the sluice gates are lifted allowing the coffee to spill out into the washing channels, in here the coffee slides down the gently sloping tiled channel. Wooden shunts are used to repeatedly push the coffee by hand back to the top of the channel, this repeated action separates the denser beans as the lighter beans will race back to the bottom under the force of the gentle current, whilst the denser higher quality beans will idle there way slowly down.
Sun drying of the parchment coffee on raised tables is done under careful supervision, the parchment coffee is covered up whenever there is sign of rain or the sun's rays are too harsh. The coffee is regularly checked for moisture and once it reaches the 10-12% target level, it will be bagged up for transport to the dry mill.
Harvest
The cooperative harvests its main harvest between Oct and Dec. Early crop is harvested in minimal quantities between April and July.
Packaging- packed for shipment into hermetically lined Jute export bags
Origin: Gatomboya - Barichu Farmers Cooperative Society
Gatomboya smallholder farmers
Gatomboya Factory (washing station) is part of the Barichu Farmers' Cooperative Society. Gatomboya collects cherries from about 600 smallholders with an average of 0,4 hectares of dedicated to growing coffee. Their total production is about 350 tonnes of cherries per year. Fermentation is done with fresh river water from Gatomboya stream.
Gatomboya is a Kikuyu word meaning “swamp”, referring to the swampy nature of the land which makes it good for growing arrowroot.
The Barichu Cooperative Society is located in Nyeri in Central Kenya. Nyeri is known for its intense, complex, and flavour-dense coffees. It is made up of mainly smallholder farms, each with some 100 trees. They are organised into Cooperative Societies that acts as umbrella organisations for the factories where the smallholders deliver their coffee cherries for processing.
Varieties:
The smallholders mainly have SL 28 and SL 34. Small amounts of other mixed varietals can occur.