BURUNDI YANDARO

hibiscus, cherry, plum, red current

Farm/coop/station: Yandaro Washing Station

Region: Kayanza

Altitude: 1800 masl

Owner: 3190 Farmers Delivering To Yandaro Station

Varietal: Red Bourbon

Process: Washed

This washed Burundi from Yandaro washing station is delightfully fragrant & juicy, with rich sweetness of red current jelly 

The washing station is in the valley where the eponymous Yandaro river runs. The growing area around the station benefits from being close to the Kibira Rainforest. A rainforest helps maintain groundwater reserves and adequate nutrition levels in the soil for the region surrounding it. Stationed near the rainforest and a large river, Yandaro station is in a very strategic location within a high-potential coffee region

During the harvest season, all coffee is selectively hand-picked. Since most families only have a few hundred trees, harvesting is done almost entirely by the family

Cherry is wet-processed under constant supervision. All cherry is floated in small buckets as a first step to check quality. After floating, the higher quality cherry is sorted again by hand to remove all damaged, underripe and overripe cherries

Once sorted, cherry is pulped within 6 hours of delivery. The coffee is then fermented for 10 to 12 hours in clean water from a nearby stream. Following fermentation, coffee is run through washing and grading canals to remove any remaining mucilage and to separate beans by density

Parchment is transported to the drying tables where it will dry slowly for 2 to 3 weeks. Pickers go over the drying beans for damaged or defective beans that may have been missed in previous quality checks. Each table has a traceability tag with the lot info. Drying parchment is stirred regularly and any parchment with visual defects is removed

Once dry, the parchment is then bagged and taken to the warehouse. Before shipment, coffee is sent to Budeca, Burundi’s largest dry mill. The coffee is milled and then hand sorted by a team of hand-pickers who look closely at every single bean to ensure zero defects. It takes a team of two hand-pickers a full day to look over a single bag