I tend to buy at least one Kenyan coffee every year, but for some reason, I am starting my search slightly early this time round. I was recently asked a question that I get asked frequently “what is my favourite coffee origin” to which I usually reply - “that would be like asking me who my favourite child is” This typically gets a chuckle and I have to admit it gets me out of answering something that I am not even sure about myself. So, this year I have decided to give this particular question some thought and I guess the title of this piece could give the answer away slightly.
Kenyan coffee has been, and I hope will always be at the top of my list. If you are looking for super clean, super juicy, big-bodied coffee with huge amounts of sparkling acidity then there is just no other coffee origin that can compete. However, over the course of my career, I have constantly heard reports that Kenyan coffees are just not as good as they used to be. I had decided until very recently not to pay much attention to these rumbles of discontent but, as I contemplate the rhetoric, I find myself struggling to pinpoint the last time I tasted a truly remarkable Kenyan coffee and this has got me diving into all sorts of articles for answers.
All roads lead to Christopher Feran.
I want to drink remarkable coffee every day. That is without question, but the days of finding 88+ scoring coffees are sadly becoming harder to find. I used to get excited around May/June time every year because In my mind I knew the Kenyan main crop coffees would be arriving safely into UK warehouses, and this meant I would soon be receiving a heavy amount of sample material that would be shedding the first rays of sunshine onto my cupping table. However, looking back over my last few years of cupping reports I can’t seem to find any signs of the 90-point blackcurrant bombs that I swear were there, somewhere!!!
Has my palate hit the brick wall of fatigue or have I just bought into the sentiments of the early speciality coffee advocates, is Kenyan coffee just a thing of legend and myth or did I actually taste this quality? Maybe I tasted something from a bygone era or was it that all of the elements of creating delicious coffee just fell into place that one time and now I only judge this one cup as them all? This incredibly thoughtful piece of writing from a dear friend of mine helped in clearing up this slight lament. Rubies in the dust
In all seriousness, I have cupped hundreds of Kenyan coffees and there is absolutely, without question still some rubies in the dust but, there is one thing that caught my attention above all else when researching this piece, a theory so interesting that I just had to share the concept.
Coffee is the seed of a cherry, and to get to this seed you need to remove the flesh. This is done in various ways but for the most part, it is removed with a heavy amount of water. This coffee will be categorised as a washed coffee and this way of processing, once picked will hopefully limit the number of defects and produce a clean and sweet cup (if the coffee is of inherent quality of course) however the act of washing is not what gives the coffee its flavour and this is where the alchemy of fermentation starts to play its role.
Depending on climate conditions and the coffee variety in question, fermentation if done well and controlled will lead to some remarkable flavour development and depending on where you are in the world will be executed slightly differently. In Kenya, they use a technique known as the double soak or double ferment, coffee once delivered to the washing station or factories as they are known in Kenya will be held in a resting tank as dry cherry for 12/24 hours, this initial drying phase will see the cherry’s flesh start to break down and will aid in its removal once the cherry is washed. After washing, the coffee would then normally be moved to the drying beds as clean parchment and monitored until the coffee reaches the desired level of moisture (normally 9-11%) however in Kenya this is not the case…
I am not going to go into the Kenyan coffee system here, its colonial, post-colonial and heavily restrictive auction systems are for another post but If you are interested I would recommend giving THIS a read. What I am going to dive into is the rapidly shrinking coffee export volume that has been declining year on year and has seen total volumes drop from over 120,000 tons in the early 80s to as little as 40,000 tons last year. This is due to a number of factors which are tied to the lack of funding and financing for coffee producers which the link above details. However, the interesting question when looking at flavour is: Has Kenyan coffee become so good by sheer coincidence?
You see the double ferment was never intended to be used to aid in the coffee’s flavour and from what I have read it was born out of necessity. The sheer volume of coffee and a lack of drying capacity to facilitate this created a bottleneck, meaning that coffee needed to be stored somewhere until space for drying became available, coffee waiting for the drying tables were sent to a holding tank full of cold, clean water and would hang out here for an extra 24 hours creating the now known secondary fermentation phase. This I believe is what gives Kenyan coffees their unique and distinctive flavour qualities. It is interesting to think that the sheer volume of coffee in years gone by could be the real reason that Kenyan coffee tastes so damn great? and this then leads to the end question: is the lack of volume today the real reason for the lack of the high-scoring coffees that we have come to know and love?
If anything else, it is definitely worth exploring further.
I mentioned in a previous post that we are still figuring out the true extent of what fermentation can do to push the boundaries of specialty coffee and this example is a remarkable case in point….
There are a few direct contacts I am exploring from Kenyan at present and this will be a topic for exploration and conversation I am sure. I would also like to share this extremely concise Kenyan production guide from my friends at OMWANI for extra reading…
Let me know your thoughts…
Burts.
Great read Dave,
I’m constantly hearing a similar murmur that you don’t get the ‘typical blackcurrant heavy’ coffees from Kenya. It’s such a shame and I’d love to explore sourcing coffees from Kenya in a more direct/transparent way to unlock the supply chain a bit more rather than current route to market via the auction.