Coffee from Kenya
Kenyan coffee is grown on the slopes of Mount Kenya and the Aberdare range. Most of it is processed at cooperative factories and sold through a weekly auction. SL28 and SL34 give the intense blackcurrant and grapefruit notes Kenya is known for.
Our coffees from Kenya
Harvest
The main crop is picked from October to December, with a smaller fly crop in the middle of the year. Expect blackcurrant, grapefruit and a bright, savoury acidity.
How we buy
We buy green coffee through two importers we have worked with for years. They visit the farms and washing stations, and they tell us what each lot cost at origin. We cup every sample before we commit, and we roast in small batches of 12 kg so every bag leaves the roastery within two days of roasting.
We publish what we paid for every lot. For most of our single origins the price at the washing station or farm gate was well above the commodity market price at the time of purchase. Paying for quality is the only way the best lots stay available, and it lets producers invest in better picking, drying and storage.
We cannot visit every origin every year, so we rely on our importers' field teams. They send us harvest reports, photos and cupping notes, and we pass the most useful parts on to you on each product page.
From farm to cup
From harvest to your cup takes about six months. The coffee is picked, processed and dried at origin, rested in parchment, milled and graded, then shipped in lined bags to keep it stable. We roast it in small batches on Tuesdays and ship within two days, so the last step is the shortest.
Each origin page lists what we have in stock now. Sold-out coffees come back with the next harvest, usually a year later.
Other origins
Colombia · Brazil · Ethiopia · Guatemala · Rwanda · Honduras · Indonesia
Read more about coffee in Kenya on Wikipedia.