This is a semi-traditional washed coffee from Nyeri, Kenya, produced by members of the Mahiga Factory and Othaya Cooperative Society.
The flavor profile is uncommonly delicate for Kenyan coffees, with sweet soft citrus notes like lime, lemon, and grapefruit and hints of black tea and honey.
Our roasters found the coffee’s delicate flavors can benefit from a slightly gentler approach than the usual high-heat we expect for Kenyan coffees.
When brewed, our team found delightfully bright and sweet cups at a coarser-than normal grind for pour-overs, and suggest that it will make a fantastic single-origin espresso.
Source Analysis by Charlie Habegger
Mount 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 (as 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. Othaya Farmers Cooperative Society, the umbrella organization that includes Mahiga Factory, is one of Kenya’s larger societies, with 19 different factories and more than 14,000 farmer members across the southern Nyeri region. The Mahiga Factory has 400 members actively harvesting and delivering to the processing center. The factory’s total parchment output this past harvest was 152,000 kgs, meaning the average member of Mahiga is farming enough coffee fruit for roughly 11 30kg units of exportable green.
Mahiga Factory’s chairman is Newton Mugai, one of the founding directors of Kenya Cooperative Coffee Exporters (KCCE). KCCE is an historic organization of almost 4,000 individual cooperatives. The group was formed in 2009, with the express goal of managing marketing and exporting operations cooperatively (as opposed to contractually with third parties) and thereby increasing returns to farms. The economics of smallholder systems are consistently difficult everywhere in the world, 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. KCCE, by managing more of the value chain itself, can capture a greater margin on behalf of the farms. Farmers belonging to Mahiga receive 55 shillings per kilogram of fresh cherry delivered to the factory, the equivalent of $1.40/lb of the green coffee price.
Kenya is of course known for some of the most meticulous at-scale processing that can be found anywhere in the world. Bright white parchment, nearly perfectly sorted by density and bulk conditioned at high elevations is the norm, and a matter of pride, even for generations of Kenyan processing managers who prefer drinking Kenya’s tea (abundantly farmed in nearby Muranga county) to its coffee. Ample water supply in the central growing regions has historically allowed factories to wash, wash, and soak, and wash their coffees again entirely with fresh, cold river water.
Mahiga typically ferments twice: once under water for 12 hours, and again under fresh water for another 12-36 hours, with a washing in between. Double fermentation is very rare in Kenya, and, based on our experience, the technique is strongly correlated with excellent cleanliness and clarity in the cup (Mahiga’s lots are some of the best and most balanced Kenyas we’ve tasted all year).
After fermentation is complete, the clean parchment soaks for 16 hours, again in fresh water, before it is sorted by density and brought to the tables to dry, which typically takes two weeks. After drying is complete the coffee is stored on site and eventually delivered to the Othaya dry mill for grading and a final round of density sorting. The established milling and sorting by grade, or bean size, is a longstanding tradition and positions Kenya coffees well for roasters, by tightly controlling the physical preparation and creating a diversity of profiles from a single processing batch.
Diedrich IR-5 Analysis by Doris Garrido
Kenyan Mahiga has been a Crown Jewel for consecutive years, a flavorful and excellent quality coffee. This year, I am roasting this coffee to be featured as an espresso on our menu here at the Crown.
As for high-density coffee like this one, I have made a simple and easy roast. I preheated the roaster drum very well and knowing that using a lot of air would help, I finished the preheating using air till I got a stable 441F.
On a 5 kilos Diedrich roaster I start my 5.5 lbs. batch adding the 100% gas power in the first 30 seconds. Then I dropped to 60% after 3 minutes of the roast and soon to 30% just before the color changed. With this, I look to push the roast during drying and then just watch the rate of change to keep lowering to the first crack and to drop the pilot down 30 seconds on post-development with enough energy to finish my 1:30 minutes on post-development. I did a slightly short Maillard looking to bring the acidity even though I know this year Mahiga became more delicate than previous years. On the cupping table, I got cantaloupe, clean citric acidity dried pineapple, green grape, hibiscus, plum, and some cucumber, and watermelon.
Overall, it is a clean and buttery coffee, with delicate fruity flavors to work with. It will perform simply great on the espresso menu, stop by and taste!
Aillio Bullet R1 IBTS Analysis by Evan Gilman
Unless otherwise noted, we use both the roast.world site and Artisan software to document our roasts on the Bullet. You can find our roast documentation below, by searching on roast.world, or by clicking on the Artisan links below.
Generally, we have good results starting our 500g roasts with 428F preheating, P6 power, F2 fan, and d6 drum speed. Take a look at our roast profiles below, as they are constantly changing!
As one of my very favorite origins, and one of my favorite Factories in Kenya’s fabled Nyeri County, Mahiga Factory coffees hold a place in my personal compendium of Repeat Tastiest Offenders. Some folks relegate themselves strictly to the AA and PB lots from these factories, but I have found more often than not that the grade of a coffee (especially one from Kenya) is not a clear determining factor of its deliciousness. Thus this AB lot is, unsurprisingly, incredibly quaffable.
I wanted to try roasting this coffee two different ways, not only because I'm experimenting with higher charge temperatures and shorter roast times, but also because I knew I'd enjoy drinking any result (unless, of course, I made some very serious mistakes). To that end, I started both of my roasts at 455F, with P9 power and F2 fan. The goal was to have two very similar roasts with different end temperatures, and with peak rates of change below 40F/minute.
For the first roast, I reduced power and increased fan speed to P8 and F3 respectively at 260F / 1:45, while on the second I made the same move at 230F / 1:15, knowing that the rate of change would continue to rise in both cases.
Interestingly, I was able to mark Yellowing at 329F only 4 seconds later in the second roast. In the first roast, I decreased heat application to P7 about 15 seconds after Yellowing, while in the second I made the same adjustment 20 seconds before Yellowing and kept it there for the remainder of the roast.
My airflow adjustments had much more of an effect than variations in heat application, as you might expect. The first roast got F4 fan at 356F / 5:15 in my usual anticipation of a spike, and this led to some serious volatility in rate of change. In the second roast I waited until 368F / 6:00, and was met with a nice, even decline in rate of change.
The only other difference between the two roasts is that for my first roast, I reduced heat application further to P6 at 374F / 6:25 as my rate of change became increasingly volatile. Both roasts finished with F5 fan to drop rate of change and expel smoke at the end of roast.
Further, both roasts spent identical proportions of time in Green / Maillard / Post-Crack development at 44% / 34% / 20%. Roast 1 finished at 396.5F / 8:35, and Roast 2 finished at 401.9F / 8:47. 5 degrees and 12 seconds actually makes quite a bit of difference, as it turns out!
Roast 1 was certainly chuggable, with bright cranberry tartness up front, clear peach, and cocoa notes for days. There was a bit of cereal here, but it wasn’t unpleasant, and sort of led me to make an association with chocolate breakfast cereals. Roast 2 was the clear winner, however, with crisp apple acidity, candied violet florals, and a tartness like a rose hip straight off the bush. Clearly either of these would make my morning, but my preference was definitely for Roast 2 with its transparent florals and clean cocoa finish.
Use this coffee any which way. Even taken darker, this coffee will have plenty of acids left over to keep your cup sweet through heavily developed sugars. Espresso, filter drip, moka pot... you name it, and the Mahiga will deliver. Enjoy with extreme prejudice.
