KABARE AA, KENYA - FILTER COFFEE

Our last Kenyan coffee of the 2024 harvest season is here: Kabare. This is AA grade, which, generally speaking, means the best the country has to offer. The coffee boasts incredible flavors of red berries, black tea, and dark sugar, with a fruity acidity and sweetness. A juicy and delicious coffee, indeed!

Kabare AA comes from the Kirinyaga region, where around 850 smallholder farmers, all part of the Kabare Farmers Cooperative Society, deliver their coffee harvests to the Kiringa Factory for processing. The washing station is named after the nearby Kiringa River, which originates from Mount Kenya and provides water for coffee processing. The coffee farms in this area are located at an altitude of approximately 1,700–1,900 meters.

The cooperative operates multiple washing stations and has a practice of rotating its supervisors between different stations every few years. This ensures consistency in quality across the stations and facilitates the exchange of knowledge.

The coffee is hand-picked at peak ripeness, and any unripe cherries that may have accidentally been collected are carefully sorted out to guarantee the highest quality. The coffee is then brought to the washing station for processing. It undergoes a washed process, where the outer fruit layer is removed from the beans. After this, the beans are sorted into different grades based on density and then fermented in open tanks without water for 18–36 hours. Following fermentation, the coffee is thoroughly washed in channels, where it is again sorted based on density and weight. Finally, the beans are dried on raised beds under the sun for 12–20 days, depending on weather conditions and the desired moisture content.