Crown Jewel Burundi Kayanza Incuti Group Raised Bed Triple Washed

taste

Taste Analysis by Sandra Loofbourow

Full of bright tamarind and topical fruit, this coffee is light, clean, and bright. It’s full of fruit acids with specific notes of passionfruit, white grape, and orange citrus. The cup is incredibly clean, staying delicate but pleasantly syrupy. This coffee cools like a dream and would probably make a spectacular cold brew. As a pour–over, it’s a sweet, bright, refreshing treat.

source

Source by Charlie Habegger

Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian, the founder of JNP Coffees, is without a doubt one of the most influential individuals in Burundi coffee today.

Raised in Bujumbura, Jeanine would go on to earn an MBA from Northwestern University’s prestigious Kellogg School, cycle through corporate America, and eventually reconnect with her birth country by founding Burundi Friends International, a not-for-profit that funds educational and economic empowerment programs for rural Burundians, which is now in its 13th year. After a few years marketing Burundi coffees stateside for friends and family, Jeanine realized she had every reason to lead the business, and JNP Coffee was born.

JNP Coffee is highly focused on women’s empowerment, and along with a few local women’s rights advocates, formulated the Burundi chapter of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance. The network of IWCA farmer members in Burundi whose coffee is differentiated by membership, marketed for its traceability and impact, and which generates end-of-year premiums for all involved is now more than 2,000 strong. In fact, the IWCA value chain has been so impactful that JNP has created additional programs to expand their farmer base and generate premiums beyond the IWCA registered growers.

This is one of those additional programs. A local leader of a producer group in Kayanza Province, perhaps Burundi’s best known coffee terroir, decided to seek JNP’s partnership. He had heard of JNP’s assistance programs and post-harvest premiums and wanted to know how to involve his group. For groups like this JNP has established the “Dushime” program (dushime in Kirundi translates to “let’s be thankful”), which provides quality consulting, lot selection, marketing to JNP’s buyer community, and end-of-year premiums. This coffee, created from two distinct processing lots, has been titled Incuti, which translates to “relative”, and is often used to mean ‘’friend” in Kirundi. A fitting title for a new coffee relationship between Burundians. In Kayanza and Ngozi, the two provinces at the heart of the nation’s coffee production, competition for cherry can be fierce, so washing stations may pay well above the country’s minimum price to court premium harvests. JNP coffee goes a step further, returning second payments to farmers and investing in opportunities for education and community building.

Fully washed processing by the Incuti group is as detailed as anywhere in Burundi where the best coffees are produced. Cherry is floated for density and visible defects prior to depulping and fermentation. After fermentation is complete the wet parchment is sorted by density in concrete washing channels. Drying takes place at first under shade, and then in open air with the parchment piled into pyramids, which are flattened and re-shaped each day as a form of incremental air exposure to slowly and evenly dry the coffee and lock in the final moisture. The resulting profile is juicy and lime-like, a great expression of high-elevation Kayanza.

green

Green Analysis by Chris Kornman

This washed Kayanza coffee comes in with solid physical specs. A standard Burundi 15+ specialty grade in terms of screen size, the beans are also low in moisture and very low in water activity. While the density is moderate, we usually expect high-grown specialty grades from the region to register a little on the high side of the global spectrum. No reason for concern, but worth noting in the roaster as you apply heat.

Washed specialty coffees in Burundi are nearly always given the full water treatment in processing. Cherries are regularly floated before depulping to remove low density fruit and foreign objects. Fermentation is followed by a manual scrub and channel grading, after which we regularly see a post-fermentation soak in fresh, clean water which can last a day or two. The last soak serves to slow fermentation and can help provide extra processing time. Washing stations in the region dedicate enormous amounts of space to their drying tables, which can quickly fill and bottleneck processing during the peak of harvest. Thus, buying an extra day or two in a soaking tank can give processors like those of the Incuti group the time they need to fully dry parchment before clearing the table for the next batch.

Local cultivars are largely traditional and legacy plants handed down generationally since the 1930s and 40s. Widely assumed to be predominately French Mission (Bourbon) variants, World Coffee Research has uncovered deeper histories into the two most common local iterations grown in Burundi and nearby Rwanda. Jackson (a Bourbon type plant) is the surname of coffee farmer in India who identified the tree as rust-resistant; seedlings were then sent to other British occupied coffee growing regions in Kenya and Tanzania. Mbrizi (a Typica type) is thought to have been introduced from Guatemala to Rwanda. Neither tree is considered disease resistant but both tend to produce excellent cup quality despite relatively low yields.

diedrich ir-5

Diedrich IR-5 Analysis by Candice Madison

I do love a ‘dream roast’, and this is literally what my final roast notes say! I’m always excited for fresh Burundi arrivals, and doubly so to receive coffee from JNP. This coffee is coming to us from the multitudinous membership of the Incuti producer group with fairly impressive green coffee metrics, if not for a little lower on the density reading that we had expected. Not a worry overall, just something to note before putting it in the roaster.

Unlike Evan I roasted this coffee second (we were roasting both CJ1407 & 1408 this week), and I would have to say that I found this roast to be more successful. For this roast, because I remembered to adjust at the beginning of the roast for the lower density, I started the roast at the same drop temperature, 380F, but kept the gas at 20%. At the turning point, I turned the airflow to 100%, and stepped the gas up twice over the course of stage one to 90% and then 100%. I kept the gas at the maximum for about a minute, before turning it back down to 90% and then, on coloring, to 60%.

Turning the airflow to 50%, I stepped the gas down twice before first crack. This meant that the coffee floated into first crack in an environment prepped for any excess heat and humidity. These anticipatory changes meant that I was able to get almost 90 seconds of development time, finishing the roast at 398F. The coffee roasted to plan!

This easy roast belies the complexity and sheer deliciousness of this coffee. Fruity and sweetness all the way. Fresh fruit notes of red plum, bing cherry, key lime and purple grape notes right up front gave way to raisin and a sweet malt note, almost like basmati rice. Vanilla and caramel were brightened by a pink grapefruit acidity and the soft tannins of black tea. The body was infinitely smooth, with a soft, buttery texture. Definitely one for the books – or the pour over bar!

quest m3s

Quest M3s Analysis by Evan Gilman

Unless otherwise noted, I follow a set standard of operations for all my Quest roasts. Generally, I’ll allow the machine to warm up for 15 minutes until my environmental temperature reading is at least 250F, weigh out 150g batch size, and begin roasting when I’ve reached my desired charge temperature.  Read my initial post here and my updated post here.

It felt like a whole new season stepping up to the Quest this week. Aside from the changing weather, receiving coffee from Burundi is a sure sign we’re headed into a fresh season of arrivals. I decided to roast this washed coffee from Kayanza province first, angling for an easy-handling and straightforward profile. I was not disappointed!

Having visited this area in 2018, I witnessed how much care and attention was taken with handling coffee. Truth be told, Burundi (and afterwards, Rwanda) are the only places I have been asked to wash my hands before handling coffee. Beyond this, seeing the diligence in labeling and turning coffee in this country was inspiring. It’s no wonder the coffee turns out to be so delicious. But on to the roasting.

This roast started off at a fairly middling 387F (my range is usually between 380F – 395F), 10A heat application, and full airflow. At turning point, I cut airflow, and waited until 260F / 2:40 to bring it back up to 3 on the dial. I then began reducing heat as I observed this coffee pass drying stage and move into Maillard. At 300F / 3:38 heat was reduced to 7.5A, and seeing this coffee continue to race a bit, I increased fan speed to full at 335F / 4:40. Still moving at a tempered but generous clip at 365F / 5:45, I cut heat application entirely, anticipating a slow roll into first crack.

The slow approach to first crack worked well; I was able to achieve 15.7% post crack development without pushing past 395F or stalling the roast. Crack on this coffee was later than usual, and didn’t occur until 388F / 7:00, but there was certainly enough momentum to get through post crack development.

In the cup, this coffee had all the delicious characteristics I’d expect while completely eschewing those flavor notes that can mar a nice coffee from Burundi. Bright lime squeeze acidity danced atop sugary raisin flavors, with a hefty grapefruit acidity and brown sugar sweetness that was completely lacking in bitterness. Upon cooling, this coffee just kept getting better. What at first came across as grape soda brightened up into that gentle lemon-limey note I like to think of as ‘Ramune soda flavor.’

Elegant, effervescent, deliriously delicious. This coffee would make a prime single origin drip offering.

ikawa

Ikawa Pro V3 Analysis by Nate Lumpkin

As of September 2020 we are running all Crown Jewel Analysis roasts on an Ikawa Pro V3, using the most recent app and firmware version on “closed loop” setting.

This coffee came as something of a surprise. I was expecting more of the blueberry and clean plum flavors that I found in the natural Burundi we also reviewed this week, so the varied flavors of the roasts caught me off guard. Like the last coffee, I cupped these separately with Chris Kornman, and again we found a clear favorite.

Our first standard, hot and fast profile was a little too straightforward. It produced notes of black tea and orange blossom: simple and pleasant, but lacking a broad range of flavors. Our third, low and slow roast produced notes of blue raspberry, dark chocolate, lemon, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and a mild orange candy sweetness. This was really nice.

Our favorite was our second roast, which lengthens the Maillard phase. I was surprised to find a range of tropical flavors in this cup: mango, kiwi, papaya, passionfruit, dried pineapple, with sweet notes of salted caramel, marmalade, and fudge. This cup was expressive and delicious and had notes that I just did not encounter in the other roasts. I really recommend a roast profile similar to this one, which gives the sugars more time to develop, in order to taste everything this coffee has to offer.

You can download the profile to your Ikawa Pro app here:  

Roast 1: Crown Standard SR 1.0     

Roast 2: Crown Maillard +30 SR 1.0      

Roast 3: Crown 7m SR LowAF 2     

brew

Brew Analysis by Elise Becker

I analyzed this delicious coffee alongside another Burundi joining our CJ lineup this week, and all I can say is wow! Seriously, what a delight to drink and brew this little gem! I used the v60 and Fellow Stagg for a side-by-side comparison, and both brewers yielded amazing results, and both cooled very well!

The v60 brew was sweet, clean, and amazingly complex. Dragonfruit, dried apricot, lemon, and black tea combined in a delightful cup that was light and silky all at once. The Stagg yielded a balanced and sweet cup that featured notes of tart cherry, rooibos, almond pastry, and a tasty chocolate finish. I typically favor a flat bottom brewer, my preference this week was for the clarity and sparkling tropicality of the v60 brew. While I did not attempt it myself during this round of brewing, I’d strongly recommend this coffee for use as a spectacularly refreshing cold brew or flash brewed iced coffee. Yum!