This is a balanced, chocolatey and juicy Kenya coffee from western Embu county in Kenya’s central province. Rianjagi Coffee Farmers Cooperative Society (FCS) is a single-factory society with a large membership of over 2300 farmers, each farming an average of only a quarter of an acre of coffee.
Central Kenya & Embu County
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 five irregular pie slices, with their points meeting at the peak of the mountain. It is along the lower edge of the 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.
Embu is almost identical in climate, elevation, and soil composition to nearby Kirinyaga and Nyeri counties. While it has fewer overall coffee farmers and is less known for its top quality, the county boasts excellent farmers and cooperatives, and a long history of coffee production, being home to some of the country's first cooperative unions prior to independence from the British in 1963.
Rianjagi FCS and Processing Style
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. It’s common for multiple cooperatives, each with their own central “factory” (washing station), to comprise a larger Cooperative Society. Rianjagi is a rare society that contains only one factory in its network. As such, all 2377 society members deliver cherry to the same place to be processed together.
Rianjagi first organized in 1976 and exists for the benefit of all its farmer members. Among other things, the group helps farmers install biogas systems in their homes and maintains a nursery of indigenous trees for members to take home and plant for native shade on their properties.
At the factory, Rianjagi collects cherry from members daily throughout the harvest months. The cherry is sorted on arrival for ripeness and consistency and then blended together for processing: coffee is depulped, fermented overnight, washed in fresh water and moved to raised screen tables to dry, a process that takes 2-3 weeks depending on local climate and ambient temperatures. Because daytime temperatures at this elevation can be so searingly hot and dry, the parchment is covered with mesh and nylon from 12-4pm to reduce the chances of cracked parchment or uneven drying. It’s also covered over night to keep off the encroaching humidity.
After drying is complete the coffee is conditioned in large perforated bins on site to allow moisture to stabilize, preparing the coffees for transit and a long shelf life. 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.
