Nairobi AA, Kenya

Origin

• 🇰🇪 Kenya· Nyeri

Tasting notes

Character

• Clean

TASTING NOTESTasting notesThe flavors a roaster perceives in the cup — 'jasmine, apricot, black tea'. Descriptive associations, not ingredients: nothing is added to the coffee. craisin, green apple, sweet lime, cardamom COFFEE BACKGROUND This season, we asked our partners Royal New York to help us source a coffee that would fit well in our “Tangy” profile . We were looking for a bright and juicyAcidityThe bright, lively, fruit-like sensation in coffee — praise, not a flaw. Citric sparkle, malic apple-crispness, tartaric wine notes; light roasts preserve more of it. cup, with a citrusy zip supported by a structured complexity. This offering comes from a number of small farms, mostly in Nyeri county; it beautifully exemplifies the classic washedWashed processThe fruit is removed from the seed before drying, usually with fermentation and a water rinse. Tends to give clean, transparent cups where origin character shows clearly. Kenyan profile . Royal sourced this lot from the Kenyan open auction system, which is part of the Nairobi Coffee Exchange . SmallholderSmallholderA farmer growing coffee on a small family plot — often under two hectares. Most of the world's coffee is grown this way, typically pooled at cooperatives or washing stations. farmers deliver their freshly harvested coffee cherries to local washing stations — known as “factories” — which process and dry the seeds before sending them to a dry mill. There, the coffee is milled, then sorted by size into graded lots. Each Tuesday, the lots are sold on the trading floor of the NCE. THE NAIROBI COFFEE EXCHANGE British colonizers introduced coffee to Kenya in the late 19th century, and they held the first coffee auctions there in 1935. Following Kenya’s independence from England in 1963, the newly liberated nation established the Nairobi Coffee Exchange as a government-run (and mandated) weekly auction. Today, nearly all Kenyan coffee sells through this system. Many regard the NCE as one of the world’s most transparent green coffeeGreen coffeeUnroasted coffee seeds as they are traded and shipped. Roasters buy green and roast locally; 'green buying' is the sourcing side of the craft. trading systems. The auction model generally results in higher green coffee prices. Exporters and marketing agents cup samples from each lot before selling it; higher cup quality correlates with higher prices. The exchange also buffers against the instability of the fluctuating futures market (often called the “C market”). The auction also draws critiques from many members of the value chain, including farmers who often don’t see much of their coffees’ profits, and whose payments often arrive after long delays. The convoluted system includes layers of middlemen between the coffee’s producers and buyers. And the long shadow of Kenya’s colonial history means that an imbalance