Coffee from Rwanda
Rwanda's coffee is almost entirely Bourbon, processed at a dense network of washing stations built after 2000, and at its best it is floral, red-fruited and remarkably clean.
The washing-station model — smallholders deliver cherry, a central station handles pulping, fermentation and drying — was deliberate industrial policy, and it worked: Rwanda went from negligible specialty presence to a fixture on competition tables within fifteen years.
One quirk worth knowing is the potato defect, an antestia-bug-related fault that gives an individual bean a raw-potato smell. It affects single beans, not whole lots, and good stations screen hard for it.
- Coffees in the catalogue
- 3
- Growing regions
- Western Province, Nyamasheke
- Varieties
- Red Bourbon, Mixed varieties, Bourbon
- Altitude
- 1,850 m
- Common notes
- red currant, black tea, cane sugar, apricot and riesling
- Price range
- $16.00 – $24.00
- Roasted by
- 3 roasters
3 Rwanda coffees in the catalogue
- Rwanda Lake Kivu — The Get Down Coffee Co. red currant, black tea and cane sugar. $22.00 / 340 g.
- Rwanda Nyamasheke Honey Process — Backlot Coffee. apricot, riesling and persimmon. $24.00 / 340 g.
- Nyamasheke, Rwanda — Coma Coffee Roasters. strawberry, red stone fruit and roasted almond. $16.00 / 340 g.