The name of Nyamyumba comes from the local washing station. This is very common in Rwanda as many of the growers are small holders and would not on there own produce enough coffee for sale, so they coop together through the station. The station was built in 2006, part of a group of nine. There has been a large investment in the infrastructure in Rwanda from USA aid money and by an increase in pricing linked to the increase in quality.

The average plantation size is 0.17 hectors (400 coffee trees) and is grown on an altitude between 1500m to 2000m and is a fully washed bourbon coffee.

For the first time I’ve been given lots of details on the processing of the coffee so thought it may be interesting to include.

Wet processing/ Fully Washed

1. Cherry are picked not stripped and only mature one are selected at the Washing Station

2. Cherries are floated to remove insect infected

3. Pulping

4. Dry fermentation (12 hours) of sweet mucilage

5. Wet fermentation soaking (24 hours)

6. Grading to separate light and heavy parchment (A3, A2, A1)

7. Final soaking (20 hours) for long lasting quality and green blue typical color

8. Pre-drying and wet parchment default sorting

9. Sun-drying on tables and continuous hand picking to reach no default parchement

Dry processing (outsourced)

Hulling (only A1 parchement is concerned for offer lots), screening, gravity selection, color sorting at buyer demand, handpicking

OK as always its more important whats in the cup. This one (for my tastes) is best suited to the filter / brewed coffee method (i.e maybe a little bright for espresso). The cup is very clean, bright with a big bite of grape like acidity. But the big component on this one is fresh cherry, turning into a sweet glacé cherry’s. Surprisingly in the mid palate it gains some unexpected body and then returns to the bright acidity.