KARATU PB

BLOOD ORANGE, RASPBERRY LIME-AID, BAKING SPICE

The Karatu Coffee Factory is located in the Thika District of the Central Province of Kenya. A "Coffee Factory" in Kenyan terms is a cooperative wet mill that buys and sells the coffee of its members. The Karatu Coffee Factory sits next to the Rwabura River on the edge of Kiawabuga Village. Membership consists of over 800 farmers from the nearby villages of Karatu, Gitwe, Kibiru and Kigaa. 

Cherry is delivered each day by participating cooperative members, sorted for ripeness, and then depulped and fermented overnight. Once fermentation is complete it is washed with freshwater in long channels and sorted by density. The coffee is then spread on raised beds to dry. Once sufficiently dried it is sent to the dry-mill.

In Kenya, a “coffee lot” is made from a bigger batch of coffee that is delivered to the dry-mill from a cooperative on a given day. When a coffee batch arrives at the mill, it is processed (hulled), analyzed (technically and sensorially), screened (separated due to bean sizes) and given an outturn-number. While the parchment is taken off the beans in the hulling process, the beans are screened and separated due to shape and size: AAs are flat with screen size 17+. ABs are flat with screen sizes 15 and16. PBs are pea-berries.

The test-batches of this coffee made me think of fruit punch! Expect notes of blood orange, raspberry lemon-aid, and baking spaces.