TURIHAMWE

APRICOT, LIME, BAKING SPICE

TURIHAMWE is a vibrant and juicy coffee from the Turihamwe Turashobora producer group in the Ngozi Province of Burundi. This offering has a bright, fresh-fruit juice expression: a burst of citrus notes upon first sip ease into sweeter stone fruits like apricot or peace; these fruit notes are balanced with notes of baking spices like cinnamon and coriander.

PRODUCER
Turihamwe Turashobora is an independently organized and women-led farmer group consisting in over 2000 famers throughout the Ngozi province. Turihamwe Turashobora in Kirundi translates to "Together We Can!" Turihamwe works closely with JNP coffee and its founder Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian. In 2018 the group was able to pool the premiums earned through IWCA and JNP's "Dushime" payment program to build their own wet mill. This allows the group to control quality standards and better capture the value added by the processing stage of the supply chain. 

VARIETY/CULTIVAR
This offering consists of "heirloom" Bourbon varieties local to Burundi. The varieties of Bourbon include Jackson, Kent, and Mubirizi. Bourbon, along with Typica, is one of the two main coffee varieties from which most other varieties and cultivars stem. 

PROCESSING PROTOCOL
This offering is a wet or "washed" processed coffee. Once received at the mill, coffee cherries are "floated" in a tank. Unripe coffee cherries are less dense and float while ripe cherries, being more dense, sink to the bottom of the tank. The floated cherries are removed and the ripe cherries are mechanically depulped. Once depullped the seeds ("beans") are fed through a mechanical demucilaginater. The coffee sits over night to undergo a proto-fermentation to break down the remaining mucilage. The coffee is sorted again under water in concrete tanks. Drying takes place initially under shade and then in full sun with the coffee piled into pyramids. These pyramids are flattened and reshaped each day to allow for incremental air exposure so the coffee dries slowly and evenly.