Kenya Karogoto Espresso

This Kenyan coffee from the Karogoto wet mill, has a very distinct and intense fruity flavour with a refreshing acidity. Expect notes of rose blackberry, hibiscus and blackcurrants.

250g pack whole bean ship within 24 hours
100% specialty arabica coffee beans only
Tim Wendelboe's coffee beans are at their peak 2 to 3 weeks after roasting

Tim's Note: 

The coffees from Karogoto are always super clean and have an intense fruity and floral flavour. This is most likely because many of the members/farmers are still growing the SL28 cultivar and have received a lot of agricultural training over the years. The climatic conditions also contribute to the coffees intensity. The cool nights and moderately hot days slow down the ripening process and give a very sweet, intense and unique coffee.

This years coffee tastes really ripe and fruity like blackberry and blackcurrants. Normally the coffees from Karogoto tend to have a lighter body and high acidity with tart rose hip flavours but this year I think the profile is slightly different and leaning towards more of that «classic Kenyan» style with loads of purple fruit flavours.

Cultivar:

This coffee is produced by several hundred farmers, most of them growing the famous Kenyan SL28 and SL34 cultivars. While some have planted newer hybrids like Ruiru 11 and Batian you can clearly taste the clean and fruity flavours in this coffee that are so common for the SL cultivars.

Process:

Picking and sorting

• The coffee cherries are typically hand picked by the farmers and their family members. After delivering the coffee cherries to the wet mill the good coffee cherries are separated from the inferior ones by hand sorting and they are delivered in separate cherry hoppers.

Depupling, fermenting & washing

• The cherries are depulped and graded by using an old Aagard disc de-pulper that uses water and gravity to sort dense beans from less dense beans. Coffee of different grades are moved to separate fermentation tanks where the parchment coffee, with it’s mucilage still on, is dry fermented for about 12-16 hours over night. After fermentation the coffee is washed in clean water and graded once again by gravity. The more dense beans are dried separately from the beans with lower density and inferior quality.

Drying

• The coffees are dried on elevated drying tables, where defect parchment coffee gets sorted out by hand. Drying the coffee takes about 10 – 14 days. During daytime the coffees are raked to ensure even drying. The drying tables are covered during the hottest times of the day to avoid over heating and also at night time to prevent condensation. The drying process is finished when the moisture content in the coffee beans is between 10-12%. After drying, the coffees are stored in conditioning bins before delivery to the dry mill. The coffees we buy from Kenya are always vacuum packed before it is shipped to Norway.

Brewing Recipe : 

Filter

We strongly recommend using the correct measurements and brewing techniques when you brew our coffees. Use a digital scale both to measure water and coffee in order to get consistent results, and we recommend using between 60 to 70 grams of coffee per litre (1000g) of water, depending on the brewing method, water quality and coffee used.

Espresso

We strongly recommend using VST filter baskets. Both the 18g, 20g and the 22g basket is great for our coffee. The VST filters makes it a lot easier to extract the espresso properly which gives a lot more sweetness in the cup. They are also more or less identical to each other which makes it easy to be more consistent when brewing on several groups at the same time. You can buy the filters on our webshop, just make sure they fit your machine (ours fits all La Marzocco machines and machines with 58mm filter baskets). With the VST 18g filter basket, we recommend the following brewing parameters: 18-19g freshly-ground coffee, 25-35s brewing time, 35-38g of final brew liquid in the cup, 93°C-94°C brew water temperature.