Kenya - Gatugi AA - Washed

Nyeri is perhaps the most well-known of these central counties. Kenya’s coffee is dominated by a cooperative system of production, whose members vote on representation, marketing and milling contracts for their coffee, as well as profit allocation. Othaya Farmers Cooperative Society, the umbrella organization that includes Gatugi Factory, is one of Kenya’s larger societies, with 19 different factories and more than 14,000 farmer members across the southern Nyeri region. The Gatugi Factory has 500 members actively harvesting and delivering to the processing center. The factory’s total cherry intake tends to hover around 323,000 kgs, meaning the average member of Gatugi is farming enough coffee fruit for roughly two 60kg bags of exportable green.  

Gatugi typically ferments for 27-35 hours depending on ambient conditions (the changing mountain climate, as for many processors, tends to dictate fermentation temperatures, and Mahiga staff are required to check fermentation progress every three hours). After fermentation, the parchment is rinsed and the water replenished, and the clean parchment soaks for an additional 12 hours, after which it is sorted by density and brought to the tables to dry, typically for two weeks. After drying is complete the coffee is stored on site and eventually delivered to the Othaya dry mill for grading and a final density sort. The established milling and sorting by grade, or bean size, is a longstanding tradition and positions Kenya coffees well for roasters, by tightly controlling the physical preparation and creating a diversity of profiles from a single processing batch.