NINGA, BURUNDI - FILTER COFFEE

Long Miles Coffee's Ninga is back again. This is a complex, fruity driven, clean and easy-to-drink coffee, with flavors of tropical fruit, citrus and creaminess.

This coffee, grown in the remote Ninga Hills of Muramvya Province, Burundi, is produced by around 764 smallholder farmers. They bring their coffee harvest to be processed at the Bukeye washing station, operated by Long Miles Coffee. The farms in this region are small, averaging around 300 square meters, with approximately 110 coffee trees per farm.

Farmers bring their freshly picked coffee harvest to the washing station, where the cherries are first floated and then hand-sorted into ripe and (semi-)unripe categories. After sorting, the coffee cherry pulp is removed from the beans, and the coffee undergoes a 12-hour dry fermentation. Following fermentation, the coffee is washed with water, sorted by density/weight, and then soaked in tanks for 4–6 hours. Next, the coffee is placed on covered beds for pre-drying, during which any damaged beans are hand-picked and removed. After this, the coffee is transferred to raised beds for final drying, where it remains for approximately 16–20 days, depending on weather conditions, until it reaches a moisture content of 10.5%.

Long Miles Coffee was founded in 2013 in Bujumbura, Burundi, by Ben and Kristy Carlson, who moved to the country in 2011. They observed that Burundi’s recently privatized coffee industry was plagued by both injustice and poor farming practices. At the same time, roasters around the world struggled to source consistently high-quality coffee from Burundi. Long Miles Coffee was created to change this reality—offering not only excellent coffee but also supporting local coffee farmers by improving their livelihoods and promoting sustainable farming practices. Today, LMC owns three washing stations in Burundi and purchases coffee from over 5,000 smallholder farmers.

In addition to improving the quality of coffee from the region, Long Miles also employs a team of local Coffee Scouts. In Ninga, Sakubu serves as the Coffee Scout, working closely with smallholder farmers, teaching them better methods and helping them maximize the potential of their farms. This hard work has paid off—and now, we get to taste the results!