Overview
Our newest Special Release is sourced through our longstanding relationship with Emmanuel Rusatira, and it marks the fourth consecutive season serving one of Baho Coffee’s experimental fermentations. Falling outside of the traditional washed / honey / natural methods, this lot represents boundary pushing fermentation techniques and is testament to Emmanuel’s curiosity and passion.
We’ve been purchasing from the Fugi washing station in Southern Rwanda for years now, but this offering represents a brand new type of lot separation. In the washing station model of coffee production, managers and workers are solely responsible for the massive task of processing the coffee and keeping up with detailed records as it moves throughout the station. We’re constantly pushing for more transparency at the farm level, but this vital group is often overlooked. All growers within the group are part-time employees at Fugi, who collectively oversaw the process of cherry collection, sorting, fermenting, and drying this coffee. We chose to name the lot for the catalyst that joined this crew together, the manager of the station - Aphrodise Munyangaju.
Emmanuel shares:
A dedicated group of young coffee washing station part-time employees who happen to own small bits of Land were united by the coffee washing station manager himself in a bid to elevate their interest in coffee value chain and motivate these young aspiring farmers to appreciate the importance of participatory involvement in coffee growing and processing. The ambition to grow and own bigger chunks of land in the near future still lives on.
Though this lot was eventually dried like a standard natural process on raised beds, whole cherries were first left to ferment for 72 hours in sealed plastic tanks (much more detailed information can be found in the processing section!). Like previous years, we’ve found that this style of anaerobic / low oxygen style fermentation always promotes a super high intensity and complexity of fruit flavors and sweetness in the coffee.
This selection from Fugi is no exception! It’s dripping with sticky, saturated fruit flavors. Intensity is high across the board, providing a full body and dynamic drinking experience that’s ever-evolving. Flavors change quite dramatically both immediately as the coffee cools and over time as the coffee ages from the roast date. We’re tasting: watermelon candy, blue raspberry, powerade, luxardo cherry, green grape, limeade, lemongrass, ginger, sugarcane, spiced rum, fig jam, black tea.
Relationship
This is our 7th consecutive year purchasing from Emmanuel Rusatira and his private exporting company, Baho Coffee. Our Director of Coffee formed his own company in 2019, Sundog Trading, and partnered with Emmanuel to begin importing coffees from Baho into North America. We’re excited to be early supporters of the project and can’t wait to see where this relationship takes us in the future.
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 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 simply trying to support the Rwanda coffee sector by purchasing Rwandese coffee from Rwandese people. Through this, we’re able to serve as a transparent link connecting roasteries in North America to beautiful coffees from Rwanda.
Historically, coffee from the 950 farmers delivering to Fugi would have been grouped into large, station-level lots. Thanks to the increased traceability and smaller lot separations that Emmanuel has been able to establish, we’re thrilled to be able to publicly recognize the producers of the coffee that make up this offering. Fugi Aphrodise is comprised of coffees grown, harvested, and processed by the following:
Aphrodise Munyangaju
Emmanuel Uwihoreye
Evelyne Ntawizerarubanda
Anastasia Mukeshimana
Samuel Nzabonimana
Oscal Niyomugabo
Marie Louise Nshimirimana
JAcqueline Nyirahabimana
Alphonse Ndayisaba
Paul Biziyaremye
Evariste Sebera
Processing
With honey and natural processing slowly becoming more common in Rwanda, Emmanuel began experimenting with whole cherry fermentation techniques that could differentiate him within the specialty market. 2019 marked the first year that these coffees were ever exported.
The top quality cherries are tightly packed into sealed plastic tanks where they are left to ferment, undisturbed and under shade for a set period of time. This specific lot was fermented like this for a period of 72 hours. In today’s specialty coffee vocabulary, this would be considered a form of anaerobic natural processing.
The goal here is to create a unique environment in which the cherries have very limited interaction with oxygen, but the environment is not 100% free of oxygen during the entire process. As fermentation takes place, carbon dioxide is released and progressively pushes oxygen out of the plastic tanks. The particular environment created changes both the rate of fermentation and the specific yeast and bacteria present.
Once the fermentation period is complete, cherries are turned out onto raised drying beds for drying. Cherries are spread out in a single layer on the beds and turned frequently throughout the drying stage. Specifically for Baho’s low oxygen coffees, they utilize unique techniques to drastically stretch out the total drying times. At 20% moisture content, the cherries are covered with mesh netting for a period of 5 days before being opened again to full sun. At 15% moisture content the cherries are moved under complete shade for a period of 5 days before being opened again to the full sun. Both steps are thought to alter the rates of drying in a way that promotes more fruit flavor and complexity in the final product. When the moisture content reaches the target 10 - 11 %, the drying phase is then considered complete. Total drying time for this lot is 56 days.
Emmanuel often compares his drying methods to that of a low and slow style of cooking. Generally speaking, particularly with grilling meat or simmering a stew, cooking gently with a low heat for a long period of time will produce an end product with more cohesive, sweet, saturated flavors. He explains: When you take meat and you put it on charcoal, after 20 min you have your meat ready. But in an oven, it would take 45 minutes. If you put it in hot ash, it may take two hours. When you taste these three meats, there's a difference in the taste. I have this kind of thinking that coffees that dry slowly, the taste and lifespan of this coffee may be longer and more delicious than the coffee that dries for 10-12 days in sun.
Brewing
This coffee tends to brew fast and extract quite easily. We recommend a relatively coarse grind size to keep the coffee tasting bright, clean, and transparent. Don’t be afraid of a shorter total brew time than usual! In the ideal brew, you’ll find a balance of tart, wild, jammy fruit flavors mixed with sticky, slightly funky, dessert-like sweetness.
If your coffee tastes bitter and cloying, like oversteeped black tea, and the flavors are muddy - try grinding coarser.
If your coffee tastes aggressively tart and astringent, like sour candy, and is lacking balancing sweetness - try grinding finer.
