Characteristics

A departure, yes. Yippee IA, you might say, is our wild child. It’s the one you can expect to be completely unexpected. In our desire to keep you guessin’ (and, okay, to keep you coming back for more…), we present this little element of Elemental surprise. Specific characteristics will vary from bean to bean, but know this: it will always be a truly interesting coffee. So do us a favor and find someone interesting to share it with, okay?  This coffee is super clean and complex.  A great mouth feel and honey sweetness carries a red currant acidity.  

Current Bean

 Farm: 

Musasa Cooperative 100% Red Bourbon

Varietal: 

Red Bourbon

Processing:

 Fully Washed and dried on African beds

Altitude: 

1,500 - 2,000 metres above sea level

Owner:  

Several thousand smallholder farmers (1,815 co-op members + independents)

Region: 

Ruli Sector, Rushashi District

The Dukundekawa Musasa cooperative lies high in Rwanda’s rugged north-west, at around 1,800 metres. The co-op built its first coffee washing station in 2003, with a development loan from the Rwandan government and the support of the USAID-financed PEARL project.

Most of these small scale producers own less than a hectare of land, with an average of only 500 coffee trees each as well as other subsistence food crops. Musasa gives these small farmers the chance to combine their harvests and process cherries centrally - and therefore sell them on to international buyers for far higher prices. Before the proliferation of washing stations such as Musasa, the norm in Rwanda was for small farmers to sell semi-processed cherries on to a middleman - and the market was dominated by a single exporter. This commodity-focused system - coupled with declining world prices in the 1990s - brought severe hardship to farmers, some of whom abandoned coffee entirely.

The level of care that Musasa takes over the processing is impressive. Cherries are hand-picked only when fully ripe and the beans are sorted, sorted and sorted again to remove defects. Individual lots are also tracked through the pulping, sorting and drying process, meaning that Musasa can trace each lot back to the individual farmers that grow it. This is no mean feat given they are dealing with around 4,000 growers!