Source Analysis by Chris Kornman & Charlie Habegger
The Process
Let's address the elephant in the room—the "anaerobic" in this natural coffee, and why we chose to drop it from the coffee's title and description.
From a processing perspective, this is certainly higher intervention offering than a "traditional" sun-dried coffee. After ripe coffee cherries were picked and delivered to Ndiaini, the central processing site, those coffee cherries were placed in food-grade airtight bags for 24-72 hours, and thereafter dried on raised beds for about a month. While there was undoubtedly some oxygen present when the bags were sealed, as the coffee fermented most (if not all) of it would have been consumed during the metabolic process of converting starches and sugars. The resulting low oxygen environment would have helped select beneficial yeasts and bacteria, allowing for the long fermentation time without the "funk" of overly processed coffee fruit flavor.
Most coffee producers, at least these days, are calling this "anaerobic," which is indeed what Rumukia communicated to us when we inquired about the specific processing details. But we decided not to use that term, and not because we're being pedantic about whether or not there was oxygen present during the fermentation process. This choice on our part was more about flavor and expectations. For better or for worse, the term "Anaerobic" has connotations for many coffee roasters and drinkers. Yet this coffee is decidedly not wild or fermented in flavor, and in this regard, it closely resembles a minimal intervention natural. If you're looking for cartoonishly fruity Kenyan coffee, this is not it. Instead, it is a restrained, and sweetly fruity example of what enhanced processing techniques can accomplish when the goal is a flavor profile that remains both true to terroir and simultaneously compellingly unique.
The Producer
Ndiaini is the name of a "Factory"—the Kenyan parlance for "Washing Station" or "Wet Mill," and while this coffee was not washed, strictly speaking, it did require central processing. A few hundred contributing farmers bring their freshly harvested coffee to Ndiaini, and from these producers a small quantity was selected for natural processing, as a day-lot.
Ndiaini is one of just a small handful of stations affiliated with the Rumukia Farmer's Cooperative Society, a relatively small FCS compared to other, larger such unions that exist elsewhere in Kenya, including in the nearby locales of Nyeri.
Rumukia is also one of the region’s oldest societies, beginning their operations in 1979. The cooperative supports hundreds of smallholder farmers through agronomic training, quality assurance, sustainability initiatives, and full traceability.
The Region
Mt. Kenya, at the helm of Kenya’s Central Province, is the second tallest peak on the continent of Africa and a commanding natural presence. The mountain itself is a single point inside a vast and surreal thicket of ascending national forest and active game protection communities. The central counties of Kenya extend from the center of the national park, like six irregular pie slices, with their points meeting at the peak of the mountain. It is along the lower edge of these forests where, in wet, high elevation communities with mineral-rich soil (Mt. Kenya is a stratovolcano) many believe the best coffees in Kenya, often the world, are crafted.
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. The economics of smallholder systems are consistently difficult, and in Kenya in particular the number of individual margins sliced off an export price before payment reaches the actual farms is many, leaving only a small percentage to support coffee growth itself, and most often this arrives many months after harvest. However, Kenya coffees are sold competitively by quality, which means well-endowed counties like Nyeri achieve very high average prices year after year, and the smallholders here with a few hundred coffee trees at the most, plus additional land uses available and local job markets, are widely considered to be middle class.
