This coffee is a lot from the Gatirima factory in Kibugu County, Kenya, one of five washing stations operated by Kibugu Farmers Cooperative Society. The cooperative is made up of 1,100 active members, averaging around 1 hectare of land, and growing tea, corn, bananas, macadamia and eucalyptus in addition to coffee.

Like the vast majority of Kenyan coffee, Gatirima receives many different smallholder farmers’ crops, usually only enough to fill a couple bags, then processes and sells it all together as daylots, as a cooperative effort. Because of Kenyan coffee’s unique material conditions, terroir’s importance is much more subdued, and processing plays the main role in coffee quality.

As a result, nowhere in the world is as meticulous in producing clean coffee as Kenya. Almost all factories utilize a “72 hour process,” a process with an additional third stage that uses fresh water to remove any remaining fruit. The basic method is that the cherry is mechanically depulped before undergoing an initial 24 hour ferment, then the coffee is washed and fermented again without water for 12-24 hours, before the final washing and soaking in tanks for 12-18 additional hours. After this, the coffee is transferred to drying beds, where they will be left for 8-12 days to reach optimal moisture content. At the end of this process, you are left with an immaculate coffee, with the only flavors being imparted at the farm or in the fermentation tanks.