Burundi Kibingo Espresso

Tasting notes: Orange and plum citrus, brown sugar and caramels, florals and dark chocolate.

Coffee breakdown:
Origin: Kayanza, Burundi
Variety: Red Bourbon
Process: Washed
Producer: Kibingo
Altitude: 1900 m

This Kibingo Fully washed lot embodies the nuanced floral and fruit notes that we love in Burundi FW coffees. Get ready for bright fruit notes like berries and stone fruit, black tea, cacao and honey.

Kibingo washing station is located in Kayanza commune in northern Burundi. The station itself sits 1,893 meters above sea level. The altitude of the farms on the neighboring hills that supply the washing station varies from 1,700 to 1,900 meters above sea level.

Kibingo serves 1,739 registered coffee growers who are spread over 18 hills in the area. All producers registered at a Greenco washing station are organized into groups of 30 people, headed by a farm leader. This leader acts as a spokesman to facilitate communication and organization with the washing station.

The washing station is equipped with 10 fermentation tanks, 2 soaking tanks and a drying field with 165 drying tables and 4 pre-drying tables. Kibingo can process 750,000 kg of cherry per day.

The washing station participates in a number of farmer outreach and support projects including a livestock rearing project and a range of Farmer Hub projects centered on strengthening cooperatives and improving yields.

During the harvest season, all coffee is selectively handpicked. Most families only have 200 to 250 trees, and harvesting is done almost entirely by the family.

Quality assurance begins as soon as farmers deliver their cherry. Cherries are wet-processed under constant supervision. The pulping, fermentation time, washing, grading in the channels and a final soaking are all closely monitored. All cherry is floated in small buckets as a first step to check quality. After floating, the higher quality cherry is sorted again by hand to remove all damaged, underripe and overripe cherries.

After sorting, cherry is pulped within 6 hours of delivery. The machine can process up to 3 tons of cherries per hour. During pulping, cherry is separated into high- and low-grade by density on a Mackinon 3-disc pulper outfitted with an additional separation disk. Coffee is then fermented in water from a nearby stream for 10 to 12 hours, depending on ambient temperature. A small sign on the fermentation tank keeps track of each lot. The sign mentions the washing station name, date of cherry purchase, grade of the bean and the time when fermentation began. Trained agronomists check the beans by hand regularly to ensure fermentation is halted at the perfect time. The station workers trample the parchment for 30 minutes in the fermentation tank. This trampling process helps to remove mucilage from the parchment.

Following fermentation, coffee is run through washing and grading canals. As the beans flow through, wooden bars that are laid across the canal prevent beans of specific densities from passing through. These bars are spaced across the channel. While the first blockade stops the most-dense beans, the next is arranged to stop the second most-dense beans, and so on. In total, the channel separates beans into seven grades according to density. After washing, this parchment is poured onto wooden trays or nylon bags and carried to the drying tables, each in its separate quality group. Each tray and nylon bag of parchment keeps its traceability tag with all info.

Parchment is laid on raised beds to dry. Pickers go over the drying beans for damaged or defective beans that may have been missed in previous quality checks. Usually, each table holds 800kg of parchment. In the peak of the season, the maximum load for a table is 1000kg. Each table has its traceability tag with the lot info. Parchment is left to dry from sunrise to sunset and is covered with a sheet during the evening or when it rains. During this time, parchment is turned regularly. The moisture level is carefully monitored and any parchment with visual defects is removed.