October 1, 2024
This month, our journey through the coffee producing countries of the world takes us back into Southeast Africa to Kenya. Kenya is a country with a great variety of climates, elevations, and biomes and is home to the second tallest mountain in Africa, Mount Kenya. Standing at more than 17,000 feet in elevation, Mount Kenya provides ideal conditions for coffee cultivation. The high elevation of Mount Kenya allows the coffee cherries to ripen slowly, and the nutrient dense volcanic soil provides just what coffee trees need to flourish, both of which allows the coffee to develop the varied and rich flavor that Kenyan coffee is prized for. These conditions are especially important as Kenya almost exclusively produces Arabica coffee, a more delicate and disease susceptible variety of coffee.
Although Kenya shares a border with Ethiopia, which is widely believed to be the birthplace of coffee, coffee farming was not introduced to the country until the late 1800s when foreign missionaries introduced the Brazilian Bourbon variety to Kenya. While the British ruled over Kenya, they had control over all agricultural products in the country with British settlers owning the land and crops and Kenyans providing the labor. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that the industry changed, and Kenyans were able to own, farm, and profit from the coffee industry. Although this was a shift towards greater economic independence, many restrictions were still imposed upon Kenyan farmers including how may coffee trees they were permitted to have and how they were allowed to consume the coffee. The coffee that was produced was also separated by quality with the highest quality beans exported to other countries, leaving only low-quality coffee for domestic consumption. This finally changed just 15 short years ago when the Kenyan coffee industry was reformed to give Kenyan farmers autonomy over the coffee that they produced.
Once the coffee cherries develop on the trees, they are then carefully hand-picked and processed. In Kenya most of the coffee is processed using the wet-processing method which means the coffee beans (the seeds of the cherry) are removed from the cherry and the mucilage (the gooey layer around the beans) is removed through fermentation. Fermentation occurs when the coffee beans are soaked in water to remove the mucilage, however, in Kenya, the water is changed so frequently that not much fermentation actually occurs, setting it apart from the way that other origins process their coffee. Properly processing coffee is a crucial step to ensure that the final product, the coffee in your cup, has the taste and mouthfeel that many have come to expect from a Kenyan coffee.
Coffee is critically important to the Kenyan economy with over 6 million Kenyans working in coffee in some way, however, despite the prevalence of coffee as a crop, most Kenyans still prefer to drink tea! At Westrock Coffee we have a place in our hearts and on our palettes for both tea and coffee. When it comes to Kenyan coffee, we often find a creamy body with a tomato-like acidity, and a savory sweet finish.
