Burundi Collines Masenga

This coffee comes from the Masenga hill ("colline") region, and part of a cluster of hilltop villages that we bought coffee from this year. It's opposite of Migoti hill, which you may be familiar with from our site. In fact, this coffee is from the same group, headed by a man named Dan Brose, and his partner Poncien. They buy coffee from the surrounding hillsides and then process it at their wet milling site in Migoti. With plenty of washing tanks, Migoti is well-equipped to manage lot separations in order to isolate different qualities during the main part of the harvest. They have two sets of tanks and the coffee is fermented in 2 stages. The first stage is dry fermentation, where the coffee is poured into the cement tanks without water. After 12 hours, fermentation is well underway. The coffee is then moved to a second tank where water is added and the process continues for another half-day, after which it is soaked in clean water for 4 to 6 hours. Once the fruit mucilage is completely washed away, the coffee is moved to what are called "skin drying tables" where it is hand sorted for defects that are easiest to see while the coffee is still wet. Finally, the coffee is moved to raised beds and dried the rest of the way down to 11% moisture.

Check out our podcast episode with Dan Brose, who started the Migoti coffee washing station with his partner Poncien.