CKB | CONGO SOPACDI KALUNGU BIRAMBO
PROFILE#1: Fruity | Light roast
TASTING NOTES: Candied Orange, Plum, Brown Sugar
IT ALL STARTS AT THE COFFEE FARM
SOPACDI (Solidarité Paysanne pour la Promotion des Actions Café et Development Intégral) is an organization comprising more than 5,600 farmers located near Lake Kivu in Congo. Each farmer has a very small area of farmland for coffee (fewer than 2 hectares on average), and tenders cherries to SOPACDI through the organization's 10 collection subgroups. Joachim Munganga, who was a farmer himself, founded SOPACDI in 2003 by restoring a washing station in the area, which provided service and market access to the growers in these extremely remote highlands.
TRACEABILITY
COUNTRY
Congo
PRODUCER
90 smallholder farmers
REGION
Birambo Microstation
VARIETAL
Blue Mountain,Bourbon etc
PROCESSING
Washed
ALTITUDE
2000 masl
DID YOU KNOW
Roughly 20 percent of of the 5,600 farmers of SOPACDI are women. SOPACDI was the first to achieve Fair Trade certification in Congo, and the coffee also carries organic certification. Members of the cooperative represent several different ethnic groups and many of the women members are widows.
PRICE TRANSPARENCY
$3.66
Price paid by Driftaway (per pound avg. across Sept / Oct 2019 coffees)
$1.35
Fair Trade price per pound
$0.95
Coffee C-Market price per pound
$0.05
Driftaway's World Coffee Research contribution per pound
This coffee travelled 7,339 miles to the Driftaway Coffee roastery in Brooklyn.
Love the coffee? You can share your compliments & tasting observations with the farmers.
WHY DID WE SELECT THIS COFFEE?
It has been quite a challenge finding Kenyan coffees to include in the Driftaway subscription. For this coffee, we sampled 7 different Kenyan samples - both AA and AB - from Nyeri and other regions.
After 3 rounds of cupping, we finally picked this one because of the delicious and incredibly juicy taste without the usual grapefruit-like sharp acidity that most high-grade Kenyan coffees have.
AVERAGE CUPPING SCORE
85.50
/100
86
SCAA Cupping Score
10 x 60 kg
Bags purchased
1 year
Length of producer relationship
15% (in 2019)
Transparent coffees purchased
HOW DID WE ROAST THIS COFFEE?
This coffee is being roasted by Ian T. from Jan 5 to Jan 26, 2020 at Pulley Collective in Red Hook, Brooklyn. We typically use the Probat UG-22 roaster for this profile. We have strict guidelines for each of the coffee profiles, and this roast has to pass the development time ratio test as measured in real-time by the roasting software, Cropster. Once it does, it is approved for production.
QUALITY CONTROL
We perform Quality Control via a process of coffee tasting called cupping on all of our production roasts twice a week at our facility in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Cupping is attended by Q-certified cupper Ian T., roaster Dave H.and founder Suyog M. All coffees are evaluated on a scoring scale of 0 to 3.
- 3.0 = exceptional roast - exceeds expectations
- 2.5 = on par with profile - matches expectations
- 2.0 = good roast, but 1 or 2 elements could be improved - needs improvement
- 1.5 or lower = failed - do not ship
AT YOUR HOME
Brew this coffee with your favorite home brewer and enjoy the taste of incredible coffee! Here are a few tips on how to make the best coffee on each brewer.
View other posts about how to make better coffee at home on our blog Coffeecademy.