This is a single outturn from a factory (wet mill) in Kenya's western Kisii county. Kisii has a unique climate and a long history of producing excellent coffee, despite being less famous than the country's central counties. We buy a small selection of western coffees each year, for their uniqueness in the cup and durable cooperatives, like Nyaturubo, which is one of the oldest in the region, established even prior to Kenya’s independence, in 1957.
Kenya's Western Coffees
Kisii county is a long stretch west from Nairobi, far further than the country’s accessible central counties, most of which can be reached in two hours’ drive from the city. To reach Kisii, it's a sweeping route along the eastern escarpment of the majestic Rift Valley, down across the valley's lake-filled lowlands, up the opposite slope, and back into the rolling hills along Kenya's border regions with Uganda.
The county sits just over the ridge from the enormous Lake Victoria, a source of near-constant humidity cycles for the region and an outlet for much of its local trade. In specialty coffee, this part of Kenya is lesser-known than the central counties. But producer groups here as just as old, experienced, and organized as Kenya’s more famous regions.
Nyaturubo FCS & Processing
Nyaturubo Farmers Cooperative Society (FCS) was founded in 1957, and still has only a single factory. However, the society is part of the Gusii Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, one of Kenya’s largest, with over 28 cooperatives and 130,000 farmer members.
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 (especially in nearby Kericho) to its coffee. 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.
Nyaturubo depulps and ferments their coffee the same day they are picked and delivered by members. Fermentation takes place overnight, and the coffee is then washed clean in long cement channels with running water, whose agitation also serves to separate the denser parchment from the lighter parchment. Once the coffee is rinsed and graded by density, it is moved to raised drying tables and dried slowly over 2-3 weeks.
