Kenya - Mchana Estate | Natural - Archived

Origin

• 🇰🇪 Kenya

Tasting notes

Character

• Funky
  20

Mchana estate is one of the biggest Coffee Estates of Kofinaf Company limited. It is 35 km north of Nairobi city and 10 km west of Ruiru town. It has a total of 907 hectares where 459.1 ha form the bearing area, 377.9 ha form the mulch crop area, 17 ha form the forests, 23 ha form the dams and water bodies and 30ha form the infrastructure. The land is characterized by rolling and undulating plains with very little points of high elevations. The soils are deep red volcanic with considerable proportions of loamy sandy soils. The Estate experiences a bi-modal type of annual rainfall. The rain seasons are experienced in the month of March-May and October- December. Coffee is a perennial crop. This implies that it has an all-year production calendar. Coffee is picked in two major seasons. The seasons are low and high depending on the pruning cycle. It takes approximately 9 months from flowering to berries’ maturity. Besides picking there are other farm operations such as pruning, fungicide spraying, weeding, irrigation, soil water conservation, inorganic fertilizers application, soil amelioration and pests’ control. Only red ripe coffee cherry is picked and processed. This gives good quality coffee as well as the prime grades that fetch good prices in the international market. Irrigation is carried out when rains are not sufficient enough to meet the biological demand of the coffee stems. It is normally done during the dry spell. Soil erosion measures done by digging soak pits in the coffee blocks to contain surface run-off. Our cherry undergoes wet processing method. This method basically uses water right from pulping, fermenting and soaking. The processed coffee is then dried in the beds or tables under the sun until it attains the correct moisture for storage and then taken into well aerated conditioning bins before storing and packing for the milling. Water used for processing is re-circulated so as to ensure economical water consumption. When the weather is not cond