Overview
Our first Special Release of the year was sourced via our longstanding relationship with Emmanuel Rusatira, and it marks the fifth consecutive season serving one of Baho Coffee’s experimental processes. Falling outside of the traditional washed / honey / natural methods, this lot represents boundary pushing fermentation techniques and is a testament to Emmanuel’s curiosity and passion.
Our importing partners, Sundog Trading (owned by our GM, Ben!) collaborated with a longtime supporter of Baho, Christopher Feran, to design an anaerobic 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 and repeatable fermentations.
Though the lot was eventually dried like a standard natural process on raised beds, whole cherries were first left to ferment for 36 hours in clean, 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 fermentation always promotes a super high intensity and complexity of fruit flavors and sweetness in the coffee.
This selection from Muzo 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: gummy candy, raspberry danish, grape juice, pineapple, limeade, sugarcane, coconut, sweet tea.
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
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, and we’ve purchased a small volume each season of our partnership.
Though we’ve pushed the terminology low oxygen fermentation in the past, we’ve decided to keep things in line with industry trends this season and simply refer to this broader form of processing as anaerobic natural. The goal here is to create a unique environment in which the cherries have very limited interaction with oxygen, but the environment is technically 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.
For this specific anaerobic natural process, a protocol was designed by Christopher Feran and shared with Emmanuel early in the 2024 harvest season. The highest quality cherries were placed into clean plastic barrels that were sealed and fitted with an airlock - allowing CO2 to escape but no outside air to enter the system. The barrels were stored under shade, where they were left to ferment for a total of 36 hours.
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 anaerobic coffees, they utilize unique techniques to drastically stretch out the total drying times. For the first 5 - 10 days on the tables, cherries are completely covered with mesh netting during the daytime and opened to the cool air at night time. These steps are thought to alter the rate of drying in a way that promotes more fruit flavor and complexity in the final product. When the moisture content drops below 20%, cherries are opened to full sun drying. 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 the moisture content reaches the target 11 %, the drying phase is then considered complete. The dried cherry is bagged, labelled, and stored in a dry warehouse at Muzo until time for milling. Total drying time for this lot was 32 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 clean, complex 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.
