Kenya Meru Nthimbiri AA

Description

Tamarind, caramel, prune, and figs blend nicely in the cup with florals and red fruits coming out with longer rest.Will it spro? I expect it will turbos well, but it's too young to test.Recommended Minimum Rest: 4 weeksRoast Color: 122.6 (higher is lighter)SL-28, SL-34, Ruiru 11, and Batian varietals grown by smallholder farmers of the Nthimbiri FCS, fully washed process, dried on raised beds, 1600-1700 masl.Sold in 300 g bags.Brewmaster J's Notes & Tips**S&W Meru Nthimbiri Washed Field Blend Kenya** they note tamarind, caramel, prune and figs. I got a more floral and red berry forward cup on my first brew. Hibiscus and vanilla (I could see this coming of as caramel-like) transitioned to a mega red currant finish. As the bag aged more orange like citrus came out in addition to some spice notes but those were much more in the background compared to other Kenyans. Soup shots hit those floral notes mostly with red berries on the finish and an amplified sweetness compared to the pour over cups. Overall this was a nice Kenyan with lots of the normal notes and brightness.  Pour over did tend to run a bit fast but I found it best even at those shorter tbts. I did find that I enjoyed the soup shots the most on this one as it really brought out the florals and sweetness. Grind 1.1.0 on XProTemp 96CBrewer OXO Rapid BrewerRecipe Soup 20/85g in, slow pump to saturate, 10s pause, full pump to get 64g out. Dilute to 150g with brew water. Grind 4.5 on ZP6Temp 96CBrewer OreaRecipe standard 4 pour 15g/250g recipe 50/80/70/50More about the producer:Welcome to Meru County Mt. Kenya, at the helm of Kenya’s Central Province, is the second tallest peak on the continent of Africa and a commanding natural presence. The mountain itself is a single point inside a vast and surreal thicket of ascending national forest and active game protection communities. The central counties of Kenya extend from the center of the national park, like five irregular pie slices, with their points meeting at the peak of the mountain. Meru, on the north side of the mountain, takes up a very wide slice of the highlands and extends far eastward. Because of the climate and high elevations throughout the county, it’s one of Kenya’s most agriculturally productive. This includes coffee—Meru is one of the leading coffee-producing counties in the country. Nthimbiri FCS & Processing  Kenya’s coffee is dominated by a cooperative system of production, whose members vote on representation, marketing and milling contracts for their coffee, as well as profit allocation. Typically multiple coops are managed under a structure known as a Farmers Cooperative Society (FCS). Some, like Nthimbiri, are a single coop and managed by their own individual FCS board. In this part of Kenya, farms look very much the same as elsewhere. Farmers typically have 200 trees apiece. Meru is surrounded by high elevation national parks on multiple sides (Meru National Park is to the east), which contribute cold nighttime temperatures, rich soils, and fresh ground water. As cherry comes to Nthimbiri factory it is hand-sorted on intake to eliminate any imperfections and then weighed and logged under the contributing farmer’s name. Cherry is blended and depulped, and then fermented in water for 12-16 hours. Once fermentation is complete, the parchment is scrubbed with fresh water and moved to raised beds for drying. The drying phase is typically 10-14 days for the coffee to reach 10-12% humidity. Finally, fully dried parchment is rested in large, perforated bins on site, a process that allows the bean’s internal moisture to stabilize for the long transit and shelf life ahead.  KCCE – Farmer-centric exporting  Nthimbiri FCS is one of the member societies of the Kenya Cooperative Coffee Exporters (KCCE) organization. KCCE is an historic organization of almost 4,000 individual cooperatives. The group was formed in 2009, with the express goal of managing marketing and exporting operations cooperatively, as opposed to contractually with third parties.    The economics of smallholder systems are consistently difficult everywhere in the world, and in Kenya in particular the number of individual margins sliced off an export price before payment reaches the actual farms is many, leaving only a small percentage to support coffee growth itself. And most often this arrives many months after harvest. KCCE, by managing more of the value chain itself, can capture a greater margin on behalf of the farms.