Kenya Coffee – Practices Processing Quality

A video travelog I created in Kenya focusing on the quality created (or lost) in the processing of coffee.

This is a voice-over video walking through the flow of coffee at a Kenyan “coffee factoryIn Kenya, a "Factory" is actually a coffee wet mill (called a washing station in other parts of Africa) where the fresh cherry is brought for wet-processing. It...” (which is what a coffee wet millThe wet mill is a processing center where coffee cherry from the tree is brought for initial processing.: The wet mill goes by many names (Beneficio, Factory, Washing... is called here).

These are video clips from my current trip, trying to focus on key quality aspects like the sortingCoffee is sorted by size, density, and color in its preparation for export.: Sorting refers to several steps performed in the preparation of coffee for export. Coffee is... of coffee cherryOriginally coffee literature referred to the fruit of the tree as a "berry" but in time it became a cherry. It is of course neither. Nor is the... before it is processed, and the quality of the drying beds. I am traveling in Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Kiambu and Muranga counties on this trip, visiting stations we have bought from in the past couple harvest seasons.

Proccessing … it’s not the most exciting stuff. But coffee processingThe removal of the cherry and parchment from the coffee seed.: Coffee is either wet-processed (also called washed or wet-milled) or dry-processed (also called wild, natural or natural... matters for the final cup. At the end I have some post-trip thoughts on whether these things that coffee buyers like me look for on their visits, are actually carried out at the mills, and if they should be when they don’t suit the functioning of the farm or cooperative. These may not be popular questions to ask in terms of putting a gloss on coffee sourcing, or for marketing coffee … but they are what I think about currently, after 18+ years of visiting KenyaKenya is the East African powerhouse of the coffee world. Both in the cup, and the way they run their trade, everything is topnotch.: Kenya is the East... to source coffee. -Thompson 

Check out our current Kenya coffee offerings on Sweet Maria’s, and Coffee Shrub