I am finally back home again after a fantastic week in Kenya.

It looks like we will be buying a lot from the Karogoto factory which is part of the Tekangu coop and a lot from the Kiamabara factory which is part of the Mugaga coop. More info on these coffees will come when the coffees are ready for sale in our store. First it needs to be processed, sorted, packed and shipped to Norway. It will probably take about 2 months before we have it in house.

I have made a slideshow with some comments for every picture. Watch it in full screen and click “show info” to see the comments.
I Hope you like it:

The first day in Kenya I spent in Nairobi at Dorman’s head offices tasting about 400 cups of coffee (Or more. I lost count) I was hoping to find some gems on the table, but unfortunately Kenya has had severe problems with drought that has affected the production both in quantity and quality. Therefore, I was very dissappointed that I did not find any coffees that were as juicy and intense as our last years Tekangu lot.

Bridget, one of the head cuppers and also one of the bosses at Dorman’s was unsure whether the lack of quality was because of the drought or if it was still a bit too early after the harvest and therefore the coffees we tasted were mainly from the first picking (which is normally of inferior quality.)  I was hoping it was the latter one being the reason. Still, after a full day of cupping without any luck I was feeling miserable but Bridet gave me hope when she told me that when the production is low and the trees are stressed and there is less of the big beans (AA+ top quality) she often finds that the peaberries are tasting better (Peaberry is when a coffee cherry only contains 1 bean instead of 2). Maybe because there is more mucilage and energy directed into 1 bean instead of two and when there is less water and therefore less energy the PB becomes more tasty.

Regardless of theories, there is no doubt that because of the lower production this year and inflation, we are going to have to pay a higher price for the Kenyan coffees this year compared to the 2008/2009 crop which was a very good year for Kenya in terms of coffee production.

On Tuesday morning I had breakfat with Mr. Kamau who is the manager of CMS (Coffee managment services) which is an organisation which helps the farmers sell their coffee and also educates the farmers in good agricultural practices. In addition, CMS are the ones monitoring the transaction between the buyers (Tim Wendelboe in this case), the cooperatives and the farmers. They provide documentation to assure full transparency in the money flow, etc. This is essential when trading in a country like Kenya that is struggling with a lot of corruption and it is important for us as a buyer to ensure that the farmers are getting paid according to the price we paid. If the farmers are not getting paid, they stop growing coffee, and the reason why we choose to pay a premium for the coffee it is to honour the quality of the coffee and to motivate the farmers to keep up the good work so that we can have as great or even better coffees for the future. It is simple; to grow quality coffee takes more time and work and therefore the expenses are higher.

After an hour breakfast and interesting conversation, I headed for Nyeri which is located in Kenyas Rift Valley in the Central Highlands.

When I arrived at the Central Kenya Coffee Mill, I was welcomed by one of their agronomists and the cupper Ernest. Ernest had set up 6 coffees for me to taste, three of them coming from the Tekangu cooperative that we allready bought from last year (and won the Nordic Roaster Competition with). The coffees were already a little bit cold, as I was a bit late, but after tasting a couple of fair coffees there was a sudden explosion of flavours in my mouth when I tasted the 3rd cup on the table. It turned out to be a Tekangu coffee and it was by far miles ahead of all the coffees I tasted in Nairobi. The coffee was extremely juicy with tonnes of fruity berry flavours remniscent of rasberries, blackberries, black currants, rose hips and yes, yes, YES! The buttery mouthfeel and the juicy acidity made me think about great white burgundy wines.  I never decide upon which coffee to buy in origin, but this coffee was just too good to take the risk of someone else buying it. Therefore I offered to buy it immediately.

After the cupping we went to visit the Tekangu cooperative society located only 5 minutes away from the mill. I was welcomed by their chairman and his staff and we had a long discussion about prices, coffee quality, the future of coffee and how we could work together in order to build a long term relationship based on sustainability and developing quality together to secure future coffee supplies and to secure future income for the farmers. Afterwards they showed me their 3 faktories; TEgu, KArogoto and NGUnguru (therefore TEKANGU). The managers of the different factories explained to me what their biggest issues were in terms of ensuring the quality of the coffee and they spoke about their 5 year strategic plan and what they were trying to improve before the next harvest. Hopefully we will be able to help them a little bit in their investments by paying a premium price for their coffees this year.

Now I am sitting outside an old colonial style house, enjoying a Tusker Malt overlooking the impressive Mount Kenya lit by a beautiful sunset. I have yet to digest all the impressions and information from today’s excursion, but all in all I am very excited to tell you that once again we will bring great coffee back home from Kenya.

Tomorrow I will be tasting more coffees and visit another cooperative.

Cheers!

TW

I am leaving for Kenya on sunday morning. Hopefully I will have time to report during my trip and hopefully I will bring back some amazing coffees that are at least as good as this years Tekangu and Kiawamururu.

We only have about 200 kg left of both these coffees, so if they are among your favourites,  I recommend getting some before it is all gone. I predict it will sell out by the end of February / beginning of March.

I will try as hard as I can to push our exporter to ship the new crop Kenyas as fast as possible, but first I need to taste some 100 or more lots before I decide which ones to buy.

We are proud to announce that we won the 2009 Nordic Roaster Competition.

For those of you not familiar with the competition, it is a competition for roasteries that normally takes place during the Nordic Barista Cup. This years competition was held in Iceland and there were 10 different roasteries entering from countries such as Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and the UK.

The format was the same as previous years. All roasteries were to deliver 2 kg of coffee roasted for filter brewing. The only things we could decide as a competitor, (apart from the coffee we used and the roast profile) was  how many grams to use per litre. All coffees were ground on the same grinder and brewed on BUNN brewers set to a specific brew profile by Mike Khan, the brewmaser representing BUNN.

The coffees were brewed more or less at the same time and poured into numbered cups in order to make the tasting blind. All attendees at this years Nordic Barista Cup got a sample of each coffee and a piece of paper where they wrote down the number of the cup they liked the best.

Votes were collected, and after counting the votes the top 3 coffees came from the following roasteries:

1st: Tim Wendelboe (Norway) - with coffee from Tekangu coop. in Nyeri, Kenya.

2nd: Solberg & Hansen (Norway) - with coffee from Finca Kilimanjaro, El Salvador.

3rd: Kaffitar (Iceland) - with coffee from Rwanda.

The coffee that we entered with was our favourite Kenyan coffee of the year from Tekangu coop. society in Nyeri. It was a production roast (which means we just took 2 kg of a random roast from our production).

Tim V and I normally work a lot with our roast profiles, so we felt confident that we were allready roasting this coffee as we liked it. Although Tim V is doing most of the roasting from a day to day basis, I am the one responsible for developing the profiles because it is my name on the bags and therefore my taste needs to be reflected in the coffees. So we pretty much work as a team. I play around with the coffees and Tim V translates the profiles I have developed on the 1 kg Probatino on to the 15 kg production roaster. We also taste every roast we produce together and discuss the coffees and what we need to do to improve it. This is probably the most enjoyable part of working as a roaster as the green coffee changes all the time and therefore we need to adjust the roast profiles accordingly.

It was only three weeks ago where we noticed that the Tekangu was not tasting as good as it was when we started producing the coffee earlier this summer. We looked in to our roast logs and discovered that Tim V had been slowing down the roast with about 30 seconds over a period of time. We decided to roast 2 different profiles the following day. The 2 roasts came out with the same degree of roast, was dumped on the same end temperature. The only noticeable difference was the total roasting time. One batch was roasted for 10:50 minutes and the other for 11: 05 minutes. When we tasted these 2 cofees next to eachother it was 2 different worlds. The 11:05 minute roast tasted smoky, flat and dull. The 10:50 roast was fruity, clean, crisp and lively and therefore this is the roast profile that we are currently aiming at when we roast Tekangu and this was the profile for our entry in the Nordic Roaster competition.

We know the roast profile is quite fast and we roast the coffee very light. We do this in order to enhance the natural aromas of the coffee without getting any disturbing roast aromas. This makes the coffee quite crisp in acidity, very clean and intensely aromatic with a sweet lingering finish.

If you haven’t tried the Tekangu coffee yet, we really recommend tasting it next to our other Kenyan coffee from the Kiawamururu factory.

I really hope you like it.

Tim W

ps. You can read more about the Tekangu coffee here.

Today we did a great roast of the newly arrived coffee from the Kiawamururu factory in Kenya.

To read more about the coffee go here.

This means we are offering 2 different Kenyan coffees at the moment, the Tekangu and the Kiawamururu. We recommend you taste them both as they are very different in flavour. Tekangu being very sweet and juicy and Kiawamururu more tea like and floral.

We hope you like the coffee.

We recieved some more coffee from Kenya today. 3 tonns had to be carried down to the basement. We will start test roasting the coffee next week and the coffee will be for sale from tuesday the 4th of August.

We will launch a newly arrived fresh crop from Kenya on our 2 year anniversary on Saturday…

Go here to read more about the coffee.

We are almost sold out of Amor de Dios as well and therefore we have changed our espresso blend slightly.

Thursday the 19th of March we hosted a taste evening focusing on Kenyan coffees. Tim had a presentation of Kenya as a producing country and shared his thoughts and experiences from his recent trip to Kenya.
9 coffees were tasted, 8 Kenyans and a new Australian coffee that tasted fantastic. (More info on this coffee next week) The 8 Kenyan coffees were samples and we will buy the best lots based on this tasting and 5 rounds of previous tastings.

Kenya has had a fantastic year in terms of producing excellent coffees. Therefore the price for the coffees is slightly higher than previous years. We are looking forward to getting the new lots probably in June. Until then we are glad to announce some great new coffees to be launched within next week.

Below are some pictures from the taste evening. See more pictures from Kenya on our Flickr stream.

You can see a short film from Tim Wendelboe’s trip to Kenya in March 2009 here.

A week has passed and finally I have time to write on the blog again after some wild time on the countryside in Kenya.

It has been a fantastic week where I have cup tasted about 200 to 300 different coffees, if not more. Some terrible, but many of the coffees I have tasted have been fantastic.
I have been traveling with Thompson Owens (picture) from Sweet Marias and Peter Dupont (second picture) from The Coffee Collective during most of the week. We have had many great discussions and talks which have been very educational and inspiring for me.

I promised you a report, so here it is:

Monday was spent at Dormans head office tasting countless cups of various coffees with various qualities. I did not really find anything spectacular, as the samples were all control samples of the coffees that were going to be auctioned on the Tuesday at the Nairobi Coffee Exchange. The coffees on the table were selected because Dormans was unsure of its quality after cupping the lots the previous week.
Either way, the cupping session was really good in order to calibrate my palate for the next days of cupping.

In the afternoon we visited Coffee Management Services (CMS) in Ruiru. We met with Mr. Kamau. CMS is a company educating their clients in good agricultural practices. Their clients are mainly smallholder farmers which are members of Cooperatives. CMS also work as a marketing agent for the coops, which means looking for potential buyers for the farmer’s coffee.

I am not going to explain in detail all that CMS does in this post, but basically CMS will help us to set up a direct trade model with a coop in Kenya and provide us with the documents and transparency so that we are sure that the farmers are getting payed their money. This is especially important as we try to buy the highest quality coffees for a premium price.

We heard about some cases in Kenya where farmers have not got their money yet after the 2007/2008 sales. I can’t even express how disrespectful and harmful that is to the farmers and the coffee trade!

CMS however guarantees the money will go to the coop within 14 days after the sale has taken place, and after talking with a lot of coops and farmers, they often get payed before the standard 14 days.

In the afternoon we went to the New Gatukuyu Coop Society where we had a very nice meeting with the chairman of the coop and his fellow farmers. Meeting farmers eye to eye is very rewarding and we had some great conversations with them about how to improve the quality of the lives of the farmers as well as the quality of the coffee they produce.

Tuesday featured some more cupping at Dormans and also a visit to their factory where we could see how they will coloursort, handsort and vacuum pack our coffees, once we have bought them.

In the afternoon we visited the Gikanda Farmers Coop. Society and the Ndaroini and Gichathaini factories (wet mills) where they have processed some of the best Kenyan coffees this year. Their coffee always stood out on the different cupping tables during the week. Although all the good coffee has already been processed, we managed to get a glimpse of some sorting and weighing of Mbuni coffee (picture below), which is terrible tasting natural processed coffee made out of the leftovers from the harvest.

On Wednesday we visited the huge Central Kenya Coffee Mill in Nyeri where the parchment is removed from the beans, beans are graded, sorted, and cleaned from any foreign matter before they are packed in burlap for storing before the weekly auction in Nairobi or packed in containers for shipping. We also cupped a lot of great coffees from Kiawamururu, Gichathaini, Ndaroini, Kangocho, etc. In the afternoon we visited Kiawamururu which was a great factory. No wonder they produce great coffees!

At the end of the day we had a meeting with the Karagoto coop society, where they have produced the best Kenyan coffee I tasted on this trip. The coffee is produced at the Tegu factory / wet mill which is part of this society, and I will for sure blog more about this coffee on a later stage as I have already bought 19 bags of it.

Thursday and Friday were spent cupping all the best coffees we had found on the trip and a visit to the Kiariaini factory, which was a bit dissapointing compared to all the great factories we had already been to. Therefore it was good to get back to Nairobi for some serious sun bathing by the pool.

Next stop for me is Ethiopia for a week of sightseing of probably the greatest coffee producing country in the world..

See the slideshow below for more pictures from Kenya.