Africa

Africa / Coffee reviews / Organic coffee

Review: PT’s Kenya Kia Ora

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #45.

In my exploration of coffee growing in Kenya, I discussed how little organic coffee was produced in the county.  At least two factors account for this. First is that there is little governmental support or official policies regarding organic agriculture in the country [1].  Another factor is the prevalence of various diseases and pests, including coffee berry disease (Colletotrichum coffeanum), coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), and coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei).  The severity of these problems has been blamed, at times, on the lack of integrated pest and farm management, and has resulted in very heavy use of pesticides and fungicides. In particular, the overuse of copper fungicides has exacerbated pest problems (although some copper solutions are actually permitted under organic standards) and contaminated the environment [2].

According to interviews with coffee-growing small holders in the vicinity of Nyeri [3], farmers have little knowledge of what products are considered eco-friendly, even though they acknowledge more birds and wildlife are present when they do not spray their crops. They also indicated that the mills to which they sell their coffee have strict regulations that include spraying regimes and prohibitions on intercropping with shade trees.  Without institutional support, organic farming may never gain momentum in the country.

Although Kenya currently exports around 50,000 tons of coffee annually, only about 400 tons are organic (2008 figures, [1]). So when I saw that PT’s Coffee Roasting had an organic coffee from Kenya, I knew this was a coffee with a story that I wanted to review.

PT’s Coffee Roasting Co.: Kenya Kia-Ora Organic

Background

There was little to be found online about Kia-Ora Farm. PT’s Jeff Taylor put me in contact with the importer, InterAmerican Coffee. Their information was roughly the same as was being reported on various roaster web sites: the coffee was intercropped with macadamia nut trees at 1600 to 1900 m in Kirinyaga. Not much to go by. The InterAmerican bean bio had one tidbit that helped me track down the source: it was certified organic by one of the handful of agencies working in Kenya, Soil Association Certification Ltd. out of the UK. A dig through documents on their site revealed that Kia-Ora Farm was owned by Kenya Nut Company (KNC).

KNC is one of the world’s top five macadamia processors. Macadamias are native to Australia, and were introduced into Kenya in the 1940s. In the early 1970s, the Kenyan government tasked KNC to develop the industry. KNC is a Kenyan/Japanese joint venture; the chair is Pius Ngugi, one of Kenya’s most wealthy businessmen. KNC has now expanded into cashews, tea packing, wine production, and arabica coffee. Overall, the company operates seven farms on over 8,000 acres, and is also supplied with raw product by thousands of smallholders.

Coffee supplied to KNC is processed in the Thika Coffee Mills (one of the handful of “factories” that handle coffee in the country), a KNC company, for both export and the local market. KNC also roasts and packages its own blends of coffee under its trademark “Out of Africa”.

The specifics about Kia-Ora — size of the farm, organic history — remain elusive.  One roaster indicated the farm grew French Mission (Bourbon) and SL varietals. If anybody has further details, please drop me a line or leave them in the comments.

Coffee review

PT’s treatment of this coffee was a light roast, no oils on the surface of the beans. A lot of people tried this coffee, and some were new to the wine-like Kenyan profile. That can spell trouble for some distinctive coffees, but everybody but one panelist enjoyed it.

Surprising was the malt flavor a couple of people detected on the front end when very hot out of the French press; this was not found in samples brewed on the Technivorm. Either way, the coffee had a resonant, tart, wine-like acidity so often admired in Kenyan coffees. Grapefruit overlain with honey seemed to be a dominant player, but one taster noticed a hint of savory on the palate, reminiscent of tomato (that’s a flavor I’ve seen in coffee descriptions, but never connected with until now; it’s way better than it sounds!).

More than one person thought that the Kia-Ora’s tartness was starting to veer off into sour territory, especially when made at concentrations at or above 1 gr coffee to 15 gr water*.  I like this characteristic acidity, but it was this sharp forwardness that unsettled some panelists that weren’t familiar with it.  Thus, the overall rating worked out to just over 3.5 motmots,  but there were many people who scored it higher (one gave it a 4), and those that preferred a heavier bodied, lower acid coffee dragged down the average. Experimentation with the ratio of coffee to water should help people find their sweet spot (low concentrations stripped it of character, however) and Kenyan coffee aficionados should really enjoy it.

We also tried this coffee provided to us by Strongtree Organic Coffee Roasters (although they didn’t know we’d be reviewing it). They took the roast just a tiny tad farther. This seemed to take the edge of the sour note, and steadied the acidity. Importantly, the coffee consistently maintained all it’s good qualities between the two roasters.

Noble Coffee Roasting‘s Kia-Ora offering is a finalist in the Good Food Awards for coffee.

Parting thoughts

Much, perhaps most, of Kenya’s coffee is grown in the sun using (a lot) of chemicals. The fact that a major company is investing in and exporting high-quality organic coffee (and nuts), probably on a relatively large scale, is encouraging. It was particularly impressive to me after reading about the struggles in both the Kenyan coffee and macadamia sectors.

Some coffee varieties that have fungal-disease resistance are being developed, which would help farmers maintain their yields, and farms, as well as support organic production. However, if these varietals are viable, the question remains — can they produce the same cup quality as heirloom varietals? Historically, that hasn’t been the case, and a lowering of quality may equate to lower prices to farmers, and subsequent abandonment of coffee as a crop, as has happened in the past.

When coffee prices declined in the 1990s, some farmers switched from coffee to macadamia. In fact, KNC has worked to encourage small farmers to grow macadamias to decease overall dependence on coffee and tea. Now, the nut crops are threatened by major fungal outbreaks. Integrated pest management and good cultural techniques can help minimize these outbreaks [4], but should farmers again turn to certain fungicides, organic certification could be jeopardized on coffee farms that also have macadamia.

These struggles have helped fuel a sell-off of agricultural land to developers in Kenya. For instance, the 1,000-ha Tatu City, is slated for a former coffee farm outside the town of Thika, about 40 km north of Nairobi.

With Kia-Ora, KNC has proven that good quality, organic coffee can be a commercial success, even as a specialty coffee export. Let’s hope this achievement is recognized and built upon in the years to come.

[1] Kledal , P. R. , H. F. Oyiera , J. W. Njoroge, and E. Kiarii . 2009. Organic food and farming in Kenya. In: Willer, H. and Kilcher, L. (eds.) The World of Organic Agriculture. Statistics and Emerging Trends 2009, FiBL, IFOAM, ITC.
[2] Nyambo, B. T., D. M. Masaba, and G. J. Hakiza. 1996. Integrated pest management of coffee for small-scale farmers in East Africa: needs and limitations. Integrated Pest Management Reviews 1:125-132.
[3] Lamond, G. 2007. Local knowledge of biodiversity and ecosystem services in smallholder coffee farms in Central Province, Kenya. MSc thesis. University of Wales, Bangor. UK.
[4] Mbaka, J. N., L. S. Wamocho, L. Turoop, and M. M. Waiganjo. 2009. The incident and distribution of Phytophthora cinnamomi Rands on macadamia in Kenya. Jrl. Animal and Plant Sciences 4:289-297.
*As ordinary people, we try not to aim for precision in these reviews, striving to make coffee without adherence to measurements as would most people. But I do try to mix it up a little, and when I’m considering a review coffee on my own, I will often make more careful experiments.

Africa / Coffee reviews

Coffee Review: Green Mountain Gombe Reserve

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #24.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Gombe Reserve.

Recently I posted an overview of coffee from Tanzania, an east African country best known for their marketing of peaberry coffees. In the western part of the country, near the shores of Lake Tanganyika and the town of Kigoma, lies Gombe Stream National Park where researcher Jane Goodall began studying chimpanzees in 1960. This area is also the source of Green Mountain’s new Gombe Reserve coffee, via the 2,700-member Kalinzi Cooperative.

Deforestation has isolated Gombe’s chimpanzees, whose population has declined to fewer than 100 individuals, within the small national park. This severely limits their range and ability to enlarge their communities. This coffee will makes a significant contribution to the preservation of the Gombe chimps.  I can’t do any better than to quote from the Jane Goodall Institute web site:

Those who purchase this high-quality coffee are supporting cultivation of a sustainable, chimpanzee-friendly crop grown by farmers in the impoverished Kigoma region of western Tanzania. The coffee is shade-grown (meaning trees aren’t cut down). What’s more, because chimpanzees don’t like coffee beans, they don’t raid the fields, thus avoiding human-wildlife conflict — an increasing, life-threatening problem in areas where human and wildlife live in proximity.

JGI hopes the partnership with Kigoma coffee growers will result in a new leafy corridor connecting vital rangelands from which the Gombe chimpanzees have been cut off due to deforestation. The corridor will allow the chimpanzees to expand their feeding range and mingle with other chimpanzee groups, which is vital for genetic diversity and disease resistance.

By connecting the 2,700 small-scale farmers in Kigoma’s Kalinzi Cooperative with new markets and introducing new quality-control and production methods, JGI and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is helping the farmers significantly boost their income and coffee production. This gives farmers an incentive to work with JGI in the future to set aside land for the chimpanzees.

If key villages reserve 10 to 20 percent of their land, there will be an interlinked, multi-village forest reserve, providing additional habitat to chimpanzees and connecting Gombe National Park to forest reserves in Burundi.

The only thing that could make you feel better about this coffee than all that is if it were also incredibly delicious.  Folks, this coffee is!

This is a medium roast, and the beans had a sweet smell, with hints of honey, flowers, and even a little tobacco. It was a distinctively African smell, but seemed unique somehow.

With its proximity to Kenya, I think we all expected this Tanzanian coffee to have the wine-like tones so characteristic of Kenyans.  Instead, we were surprised by the little citrus kick when piping hot and the undertone of fruit that followed that was so reminiscent of an Ethiopian coffee. Finally, when cooler, came the tart wine finish.

This coffee was marvelously complex, but not jarringly so, as some Africans can be.  It harmoniously went from one flavor to the next, each nicely balanced. The bird song it evoked for us was that of the Yellow-breasted Chat: full of interesting and sometimes unusual notes, all coming from an enigmatic source. There was only one shortcoming in the Gombe Reserve — we felt it failed brewed in drip coffee maker, even using a gold filter. The loss of character was nearly complete. Please prepare this special coffee in a French press, Chemex , Eva Cafe Solo, or  vacuum pot. This is seriously good coffee — 4 motmots.

Africa / Coffee reviews / Retail and specialty roasters / Starbucks

Starbucks Black Apron Terranova Estate

(Update: As of 2013, the family that owned Terranova made the difficult economic decision to cease farming coffee. More here.)

I have commented on two previous Starbucks Black Apron selections (Sulawesi Kopi Kampung and Ethiopia Gemadro Estate), so I may as well keep going. The latest Black Apron coffee is Terranova Estate from Zambia.

Recall that the Black Apron Exclusives are limited offerings that are described by Starbucks as being rare, exotic, distinctive, or unique in some way. Farmers receive a cash award of $15,000 for community projects.

As far as I can recall, this is the only coffee I’ve seen from Zambia. This country lags behind the big players on the African coffee scene, such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Tanzania.  Zambia is a land-locked country, and at times its coffee has suffered from transportation problems getting to and sitting at port. Coffee is not a traditional crop in Zambia, which first began exporting only about 15 years ago in an effort to diversify the economy. The majority (greater than 95%) of Zambian coffee comes from the 30 to 50 large commercial coffee farms. About 40% of Zambian coffee is grown in the northeastern part of the country, the southern Mazabuka region accounts for about just under 50%.

So, what about the Terranova Estate? Terranova is one of the large estates, at 1000 hectares, of which about 20% is in coffee.  It supports a small village of 300 people year-round, and employs 2,500 people during peak harvest time. Terranova is located in the upper Kaleya Valley near the town of Mazabuka. The altitude is around 1000-1200 meters, at the low end of the arabica growing range.

During the European colonial era, when Zambia was known as Northern Rhodesia, large farms run by whites produced food for local consumption. Many European plantation owners left the country when it gained independence in 1964.  The Street family had been farming in the area for decades when they acquired Terranova in the mid-1980s.  In addition to other crops, including cut flowers for export, they began farming coffee with the help of financing from a number of sources, including the World Bank, the European Investment Bank, and the EU’s Export Development Programme.

The eco-friendliness of the estate is a bit hard to assess. Because coffee farming is relatively “new” in Zambia, the more modern techniques of pulp composting, water conservation, and natural pest control are often practiced. Southern Zambia has a very prolonged dry season, so coffee requires irrigation. In the case of Terranova, water is provided by at least one dam on the Kaleya River that was built by the Street family, as well as other advanced irrigation systems. However, there was nothing on the Terranova web site regarding their farming practices or sustainability measures.  The site does say that the “Estate contributes heavily to the wildlife management of the Lower Zambezi National Park.”

The export revenue as well as seasonal jobs provided by coffee is important to Zambia.  Zambia is one of the poorest nations in the entire world. Although I’m uncertain about biodiversity preservation measures at Terranova, there is a connection between poverty and environmental exploitation — and fighting poverty can preserve ecosystems. Terranova provides many jobs, and has constructed a school on the estate that has over 200 students.  It may very well be that this enterprise is a worthy cause to support.

As far as the coffee itself, Coffee Review pretty much flunked coffee from Terranova in 1999, calling it flat and woody. But according to Sweet Maria’s, 1999 was not a good year for Zambian coffee. Things have apparently improved.  Although not a fan of dark roasts, the Star[bucks]ling said that the Starbucks Terranova was incredibly complex, and fruity flavors emerging in stages as it cooled: blueberry, orange, apricot, and plum, with blueberry dominating.  He said it was “very African, like a fine, rich, wine,” and quite impressive.

Africa / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Novo Coffee’s Ethiopians

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #11

Three Ethiopian selections from Novo Coffee.

In my post about Starbucks Black Apron Ethiopia Gemadro Estate, I suggested Denver’s Novo Coffee as a source for a great variety of Ethiopian coffees.  We tried three Novo Ethiopians, and here’s what we thought.

Hache — The Hache Coop is located in Sidamo. This was one of the lightest roasts we have tried, and certainly lighter than any African coffee we have seen.  We’d describe the color as on the light side of  medium-brown, yet a few showed tiny pinpricks of oil.  The beans were fairly small, and we tried this at 9 days past the roast date, so my guess is that the oil emerged post-roast.

The smell of the beans was far less fruity than we’d expected from an Ethiopian, with only a teasing hint of fruit that is usually so characteristic of this region. Two of us thought it had a woody smell — not woodsy, but like very pleasant fresh-cut lumber, juniper was suggested by one person.  Another pegged it as smelling nutty.  With that, another panelist commented, “I don’t smell enough nuts, dare I say.”

This was a wonderfully full-bodied coffee, velvety and smooth.  Most Ethiopians are very bold and have a lot going on.  This was a less complicated coffee, but still had a background of cherry cordial candies and, when it cooled, just a hint of citrus.  Novo describes flavors of caramel, lingenberry, walnut oil, and cocoa.  None of us had ever seen a lingenberry — maybe that was the “cherry cordial” taste we picked up, and the nutty aromas were the walnut oil.

It did not mention on the Novo site whether this is a dry (natural) or wet (washed) processed bean.  Other roasters have advertised natural beans from the Hache Coop.  We usually associate dry process with a much wilder and more pronounced fruity taste, so I don’t know what to attribute the quiet elegance of this coffee to — a different process, masterful roasting, or an exceptional crop. Whatever the reason, a solid winner, and the favorite Ethiopian any of us had ever tasted.  It would make an excellent choice for somebody’s first foray into the coffees of this country, as it is restrained but still possesses the unique character of Ethiopia. 4 motmots.

Abeba — A member of the Yirgacheffe Union, Adado Coop sits close to the town of Dilla, around 400 km south of the capital of Addis Ababa. As far as we know, this is a dry process coffee. This was the coffee with the most going on, first tried 7 days after the roast date.  Like the Hache, it was a pretty light roast, with small beans.  They had the distinctive berry aroma one expects from an Ethiopian — this was tart and tangy.  There was also a spicy or peppery smell, especially when brewed.  One taster said, “My nose is tingling.”

We did not get the very citrusy pizzazz that we expected from a Yirg (described by Novo as “brilliant tangerine citrus”). The flavor remained stable from hot to cool, was medium to full bodied, with a delicate citrus flavor as well as an interesting floral tone we liked very much and struggled to identify. Novo suggests jasmine, and we also thought perhaps bergamot (although we may have been mixing up our Chinese restaurant and Earl Gray teas!). There was a lingering aftertaste which Novo described as honeydew melon, and we could in fact pick up a little Jolly Rancher flavor there. It was pretty intriguing.

The Abeba had a distinct character and was subtly assertive while still being (if we can trot out this language) approachable. A good choice for an established Ethiopian fan or an adventurous beginner. 3 motmots.

Wild Forest Tega — Kaffa.  This is the birthplace of coffee. Novo states, “As far as we know, this is the first exemplary wild forest coffee available in the U.S.”

We tried this first 11 days after roasting, the last of the three as we expected this to be the most untamed and complex of our choices, and didn’t want to go from the mellow, simple coffees of Latin America that we’d been drinking to something well removed from their straightforwardness.

With some anticipation, we opened the bag. These were larger beans, and roasted slightly darker than the other two.  To our surprise, there was no bold aroma or big fruity smells.  When ground, these beans had a rather unusual golden-orange color which also translated into the cup. The ground beans gave off a sharp, piquant smell, a bit floral?  A couple people noted a chocolate smell. I kind of thought I smelled the forest in the beans.  Sounds hokey, but it was the image that flashed in my head when I smelled them.

This coffee totally surprised us.  It was clean and bright, with no aftertaste. It was exceptionally mild, boring actually.  We tried it stronger, both in the Cafe Solo and in a French press.  It remained consistent from batch to batch; we thought a wild coffee like this might vary from pot to pot. Disappointingly, the constant was unremarkable. It was thin-tasting, with little body (sort of like tea).  It wasn’t bad, just dull. Coffee Review tasted Paradise Roasters Tega and Tula farm forest coffee, and described flavors such as orange, lavender, and pipe tobacco, none of which were evident in this coffee, presumably from nearby.  However, the reviewers also noted another lot from same farm last year was not nearly as distinctive, so perhaps there is a lot of variability. 2.25 motmots.

Novo also sells espresso roasts of the three coffees above, as well as another selection, Addis Katema from Yirgacheffe.  Novo features another origin, Panama, with nine choices, more from this country than I’ve seen offered at any other single place.  Enjoy!