Coffee of the Month: Rwanda, Murambi

The bulk of Rwanda’s coffee processing is based on a centralized washing station
system. The harvest starts on small family owned farms where coffee is cultivated on just a few acres of land usually intercropped with soy beans. These farmers deliver their harvested cherries to a modern washing station, which alleviates the expense and risk of processing themselves.

This particular lot was produced at a washing station in the Gatsibo District run by Impexcor ltd, which was established in 2016. A select group of 170 local coffee farmers harvest and deliver cherries to the Murambi washing station. Processing at the Murambi washing station includes hand sorting and floating cherries to remove damaged or underdeveloped coffee. Next cherries are depulped and fermented. Once the fermentation is complete the parchment is soaked in fresh water between 18-24 hours to halt fermentation and stabilize the moisture content of the batch. After the soak, the parchment is washed once again, this time in grading channels—long shallow concrete channels with water flowing through—which allows the parchment to naturally separate by density. From here, each separate density grade is moved to pre drying tables to be hand-sorted for imperfections and gently dried to the touch. After the hand-sort is complete, the parchment is then moved to fully-exposed drying tables to finish drying, a process that takes between 14-21 days depending on the climate.

We loved this coffee for its crisp acidity and clarity. We were finding flavors of plum, apricot (Pluot), grapefruit, lime, floral, chamomile, hibiscus (Red Zinger tea), and subtle all-spice.