Kenya Nyeri Rukira AB

Rukira is a wet mill, what is referred to as a "factory" in Kenya terms. Basically this is where members bring coffee cherry for processing - pulping, fermenting, washing, and drying. It's a cooperative setup where these different stations are aligned with farmer members, and the stations belong to a much larger cooperative society: in this case Othaya Farmers Cooperative Society ("FCS"). Rukira is one of several member stations, and is comprised of over 500 members delivering coffee cherry to the mill. The Othaya FCS started in the mid-1950s, ballooning from 250 original members to 15,000 strong today. Altitude of the washing station is just shy of 1900 meters, and you mostly see SL-28 and SL-34, along with a little Ruiru and Batian cultivars mixed in. Several years back we bought an AB auction lot of Rukira, and we're glad to see it's return. Fruited, bright, sweet, juicy - a real stunner Kenya. This was bought as part of Othaya's own program they call "Red Cherry". In short, they pick a few of the farmers who consistently deliver top quality coffee and then work with them to employ an added layer of cherry sorting before the coffee is depulped. This way, they are able to pick out any coffee that is visibly outside the color spectrum that would indicate peak ripeness (hence the name, "Red Cherry"!). We generally buy three different outturns from Kenya that are differentiated by bean size; the large AA beans, the medium size AB beans, which this is, and the rounded "peaberries". To be clear, all of these different grades are separated from a single lot of coffee, and there's no clear tie to cup quality. Overall, I found this coffee to roast evenly, color quite uniform as you pass a City roast level.