Burundi | Kibingo

Red Grape | Oolong | Vanilla

Region | Kayanza
Altitude | 1700-1900 MASL
Process | Honey
Variety | Red Bourbon

This is our third time getting this Kibingo in at Cloud Picker and this time we've gone for a honey process - really quite an unusual approach in Burundi and we think they've nailed it!

Kibingo is a washing station which serves 1,739 farmers around the Northern Burundian commune of Kayanza. These farmers are spread out over 18 hills in the area and they are organised into groups of 30 people who are represented by a farm leader to help with communication.

The washing station is managed by Greenco, a company involved in a number of Burundian washing stations including the producers of a previous coffee of ours, Nemba. They work with agronomy graduates to provide farmer training and support to the stations. They are also committed to a number of environmental projects such as adding solar panels to all their washing stations to power their electronics and treating the wastewater so it can flow back into the local rivers.

The Kibingo station has 10 fermentation tanks, 2 soaking tanks and 165 drying tables as well as 4 pre-drying tables. The farmers get organic fertiliser from the station made from composted coffee pulp. There is a nursery for farmers to obtain subsidised seedlings. On arrival, the beans are floated for quality and dried slowly for 2 or 3 weeks with regular picking out of defective beans throughout this time.

Line them up, Bingo!