This dynamic Kenyan coffee comes from the Kirinyaga region, just south of Mount Kenya. It’s a collection of coffees from two coffee cooperatives: Rungeto and Baragwi, and was processed at both the Kairu and Kii factories, or washing stations. The coffees arrived to our warehouse separately, and we blend them together at our roastery in Brooklyn - to make the blend, we use 70% of the coffee from the Baragwi co-op, and 30% of the coffee from the Kairu co-op.

WHAT MAKES A BLEND?
When you see the word "blend" out in the world on coffee bags, it is usually being used to describe two or more coffees from different countries that are combined into one. However, it is also very common to blend coffees from the same country or region! There are different reasons why a roaster may choose to do this - sometimes to achieve a certain flavor profile, or just to have enough coffee for their needs. We chose to blend for the latter reason: there wasn't enough coffee available from just one of these farms, so we chose to buy both and blend them together - it was important that they were both grown close to each other and taste very similar to each other.

BARAGWI COOPERATIVE
The Baragwi Farmer Cooperative Society was registered in 70 years ago in 1953, and is now the largest cooperative in Kenya - both in the volume of coffee they produce, and also the number of members. Baragwi runs 12 factories for processing all of the coffee that they purchase from their 16,892 members across the Kirinyaga region. This lot was processed at a mill called Kairu, and approximately 1,500 smallholder farmers contributed.

Achieving consistency across factories is essential to the co-op, so all of the factory managers rotate around the factories they work every two years. Baragwi also hires agronomists to train their farmers, and provides them with manure for fertilizer and seedlings.

RUNGETO COOPERATIVE
This co-op is much newer than Baragwi, having been formed in 1997. Today it has approximately 850 members.

They process, or turn their coffee fruit into the dried seed that we roast, at their Kii Factory at the foot of Mt. Kenya, and dry the coffee on rasied beds under full sun.

Kii Factory is known for processing high quality coffee, and this is the result of their insistence on impecably sorting the coffee cherries before processing, so that only the ripest cherries are processed.