Overview
Our second Special Release of the year is another lot sourced via our longstanding relationship with Emmanuel Rusatira of Baho Coffee, and it marks the first season serving a honey processed offering from the Muzo station.
Our importing partners, Sundog Trading (owned by our GM, Ben!) collaborated with a longtime supporter of Baho, Christopher Feran, to design an extended fermentation honey protocol that they shared with Emmanuel early last year. Emmanuel, as always, was absolutely thrilled to try new techniques, so he was fully on board! Sundog requested to try the process with a selection of the highest quality cherries sourced from the highest altitude areas, and agreed on an exact purchase volume and price. The overarching goal is to use this as a jumping off point for further refinement in future seasons as they push towards more consistent experimental processes.
Unlike a standard honey process where the coffee would go directly onto drying tables after de-pulping, this process involved an extended fermentation period that was designed to boost the clarity of flavors in the cup. It’s been officially labeled as a white honey, due to a vigorous washing step that makes it alllllmost a washed coffee. No rules! Check out the processing section for more in depth info.
The expert processing here no doubt plays a crucial role in creating such a complex drinking experience. There are a lot of softer flavors - think apricot, green grape, melon, white tea - that harmonize to create a silky, elegant feeling coffee. We’re tasting: apricot jelly, limeade, green grape, white tea, cantaloupe melon, golden raisin, ginger, honey, caramel, baking spices.
Relationship
This is our seventh consecutive year purchasing from Emmanuel Rusatira and his private exporting company, Baho Coffee.
After nearly 20 years of experience establishing and managing washing stations throughout Rwanda for a large export company, Emmanuel Rusatira and his family decided to branch out and start their own operations. Establishing Baho Coffee allowed him to freely focus his energy towards implementing his personal philosophies and pushing high quality protocols with his own privately owned stations. Emmanuel is impressively proactive with education and outreach. He works closely with producers year round - distributing seedlings, educating on proper growing and picking techniques, giving loans for infrastructure or quality of life investments, and generally being a positive force in the community and friend to all.
From our importing partners, Sundog Trading: The Rwanda coffee sector is unique in that it’s extremely small, which means that it’s possible for buyers to have a serious impact on the entire market. With an average annual export of between 267,000 - 400,000 bags, Rwandese coffee is a drop in the bucket of world coffee production. For context - Costa Rica, considered the smallest producer in Central America, produces 1.6 million bags annually, and Colombia produces 15 - 18 million annually. Coffee represents 25% of Rwanda’s total export economy, meaning that the government's efforts to make coffee a valuable sector for profit and employment generation has reaped huge benefits. The potential for impacting the overall economic well-being of the country is possible via coffee, but it must be optimized for that purpose. First and foremost, we believe that the profits must go to locals rather than major multinationals; and secondly, quality and prices must continue to increase.
We’re excited to be working with Baho Coffee for these very reasons. Emmanuel is one of a very small group of Rwandese people who are exporting their own coffee; this means that profits are remaining within the country and are being reinvested back into people. There is a deep level of commitment and respect between Emmanuel, his employees, and the farmers who deliver to Baho stations. Unlike many multinational companies, he is directly invested in the future of his own country. Working with and buying from Baho Coffee is meaningful to us in many ways; but at the heart of it all, we’re trying to support the Rwanda coffee sector by purchasing Rwandese coffee from Rwandese people.
Processing
For this specific white honey process, Sundog collaborated with their friend and longtime supporter of Baho, Christopher Feran. Christopher designed a protocol that was shared with Emmanuel early in the 2024 harvest season. Muzo was a clear choice for this trial, as it’s a location where you could easily source cherry grown at over 2000 masl from the latter third of the harvest season. We’re incredibly excited that this honey process worked so well and already have plans to secure a bit more next season!
Every processing style begins with a day of intensive sorting at the cherry stage, under complete shade, to ensure only the ripest are chosen and any visible defects are removed. Step two is multiple rounds of floating - filling a large container with cherries and water, discarding the less dense cherries that float to the top of the tank. The densest coffees (sinkers) are reserved to be processed as the higher grade lots, and the less dense coffees (floaters) are mixed in with the rejected cherries from the initial sorting to be processed as lower grade lots.
After enough volume was accumulated, the cherries were depulped and placed into clean plastic barrels filled with fresh, cold water. The barrels were stored under shade, lids off, where they were left for a total of 48 hours. Every 12 hours, the wet parchment slurry was very gently stirred; and at the 48 hour mark, it was vigorously stirred to remove the majority of the mucilage before being transferred to the drying tables.
The parchment is dried on raised beds, where it’s very frequently turned until drying is complete. Weather conditions are closely monitored throughout the day, and if certain temperature thresholds are exceeded, workers will focus on turning coffee more frequently or cover the beds with mesh netting. When moisture content reaches the target of 11%, the drying phase is considered complete. The parchment is bagged, labelled, and stored in a dry warehouse at Muzo until time for milling. Total drying time for this lot was 30 days.
Brewing
This coffee extracts quite easily and there’s a lot of complex flavors available to play with. At tighter grind sizes, you’ll find the profile shifts deeper and sweeter like dried apricot, cola, and caramel. Using a relatively coarser grind will keep the coffee tasting bright and transparent, with more of the citrus and florals shining through. Both delicious avenues to explore!
If your coffee tastes thin, tart, and lacking sweetness - like lemon or under ripe plum - try grinding finer.
If your coffee tastes cloying, intense, and bitter - like cacao or over steeped black tea - try grinding coarser.
