Kenya Chinga AB

Country: Kenya
Region: Karuthi, Nyeri County
Varietal: SL28, SL34, Ruiru 11, Batian
Process: Washed
Altitude: 1,795 MASL
Cupping Notes: Raspberry, Lime, Sugarcane

Description: The Chinga Factory was built in 1960 in Karuthi, Nyeri on the banks of the Gikira River. It’s one of 19 factories/washing stations under the Othaya Farmers Cooperative Society OFCS), which was registered in 1956. They provide seedlings, dry milling, and farm provisions to all of its factories. Chinga supports nearly 800 smallholder farmers, and all coffee produced by the 15,000 growers belonging to OFCS is certified Fairtrade. The coffee contributing to this lot benefits from fertile red volcanic soils that are rich in phosphorus, and the region is famous for high quality coffee and tea. Once coffee is delivered to Chinga wet mill, it will be sorted before being pulped, fermented, and then washed clean of mucilage. Parchment coffee is then delivered to raised beds for slow drying, taking 14-21 days. At this point, coffee is then trucked to Nairobi where it will be dry milled and prepared for export. Once milled is also when grading takes place, including the grading of this AB. The Kenyan Grading System is (mostly) used to sort between different sizes of green coffees, not to distinguish between qualities. AB denotes that the coffees are screen sizes 15-16, measured in 64th of an inch.