More about the cultivar
This coffee is produced by several hundred farmers, most of them mainly growing the K7 cultivar with some farmers also producing the SL28 and SL34 cultivars.
K7 was released in Kenya in 1936 after selections from the original population by Scott Agricultural Laboratories. It is still planted and produced in Kenya and most farmers who deliver cherries to the Kapsokisio wet mill are still producing K7. Recent genetic tests have confirmed that K7 is related to the Bourbon genetic group.
Process
Picking and sorting
- The coffee cherries are typically hand picked by the farmers and their family members. After delivering the coffee cherries to the wet mill the good coffee cherries are separated from the inferior ones by hand sorting and they are delivered in separate cherry hoppers.
Depupling, fermenting & washing
- The cherries are depulped and graded by using an old Aagard disc de-pulper that uses water and gravity to sort dense beans from less dense beans. Coffee of different grades are moved to separate fermentation tanks where the parchment coffee, with it’s mucilage still on, is dry fermented for about 12-16 hours over night. After fermentation the coffee is washed in clean water and graded once again by gravity. The more dense beans are dried separately from the beans with lower density and inferior quality.
Drying
- The coffees are dried on elevated drying tables, where defect parchment coffee gets sorted out by hand. Drying the coffee takes about 10 – 14 days. During daytime the coffees are raked to ensure even drying. The drying tables are covered during the hottest times of the day to avoid over heating and also at night time to prevent condensation. The drying process is finished when the moisture content in the coffee beans is between 10-12%. After drying, the coffees are stored in conditioning bins before delivery to the dry mill. The coffees we buy from Kenya are always vacuum packed before it is shipped to Norway.
