For the 4-2021 release, we’re roasting a honey processed coffee from the Gahahe Station in Burundi. This selection has a soft, clean cup character with burned sugar sweetness, bergamot orange fragrance, old-fashioned spice cookies, and a heavy black tea acidic impression.
Gahahe Station is a coffee cherry collection site in Gatara Commune, Kayanza, Burundi’s northern province, on the Rwandan border. It’s located at an elevation of just over 1800 meters above sea level and serves as a collection point for approximately 600 local farmers who are also members of the station. Farmers in this area often grow older bourbon varieties, the original coffee cultivar brought to the region by Catholic monks from the island of Reunion in the 1930s.
Gahahe was established in the mid-1980s when the World Bank was heavily investing in Burundi’s coffee sector, and washing stations like this one were built to serve the surrounding coffee communities, complete with an eco-pulping Penagos for processing coffee cherry. They’ve recently been taken over by a Burundi coffee investment group, which can provide agronomical assistance to station members, regular maintenance of washing station equipment and drying beds, and management teams who follow the coffee deliveries from cherry selection to keeping lots.
After partnering with this organization, many of the stations have performed well in Burundi coffee competitions, with Gahahe placing fourth in 2015 and seventh the year before. This is a honey process lot, which means the depulped coffee skips the wet processing fermentation stage and goes straight to the drying beds, where the coffee dries with the fruit intact. This can result in a fruitier, lower-acid cup.