Karinzi is a smallholder coffee cooperative affiliated with Sogestal Kayanza, located in north Burundi near the Rwanda border. A sogestal is the Burundi entity that oversees regional cooperatives, helping them warehouse and market their coffees. Also, Karinzi is in the middle of a name change, to Maruri Hill Cooperative, so we thought we would use both to identify the coffee. The coop has relied on the Sogestal for the wet-processing but in 2012 they are taking profits to buy a new Penagos pulper, and do all the processing themselves. This will help them retain more profit from the sale of their coffee lots, rather than processing fees.

Karinizi is a coffee defined by its broad range of sweetness. Dried fruits and sugar browning notes seem to dominate this flavor profile in the different roasts we cupped. The dry fragrance demonstrates sweet flavors ranging from raisin and apricot to cinnamon and brown sugar or even toffee . A Full City roast offered us more in terms caramelized beef fat and baker’s chocolate. The crust on Karinizi gave a syrupy sweetness along the lines of cream soda and sarsaparilla. More dried apricot and sugar browning appeared in the break. Golden raisin and yes, more dried apricot, are the fruit forward flavors in the cup highlighted by a chocolate syrup finish. This is a coffee with solid mouth feel; not heavy but certainly full enough. A Full City roast showed us flavors more towards sarsaparilla, cola nut and still finished quite sweet. Both the City + and Full City roasts were accentuated by the sweet and syrupy tamarind fruit at lower temperature. Karinizi is a “tight” coffee in the sense of it needing time to cool to show its true colors. The coffee works well for brighter espresso, straight or as a component in a blend. We found our best results hitting this coffee with a lot of heat up front and not giving too much time between first and second crack to settle into finish. Like Rwanda coffees, Burundi can throw a potato defect cup every so often.

The Ngogomo Washing Station is located in Northeastern Burundi, situated in the province of Muyinga. Ngogomo is part of Sogestal Kirundo, which basically is an aggregate of cooperatives, assisting with everything from the processing of coffee to marketing and all that is in between. The Ngogomo mill rests at 1650 meters, which as with other small holders in the area, helps to produce some really wonderful, high altitude, high density bourbon. This coffee won 8th place at the Burundi Prestige Cup competition, and is one of a few winners we are currently offering. And like the other winners, we thought we were going to be able to offer much larger lots, but were wrong. In actuality Ngogomo is the largest lot from the auction and is only 11 bags.

Ngogomo is a well balanced coffee, characterized by fruit juice sweetness and gentle, but definite malic acidity. Freshly ground, Ngogomo smells of a mix of aromatic apple and mulling spices. Brown sugar, clove, and cinnamon continue to seep up through the crust culminating a sense of candied nuts, including pecans, macadamias, and pralines. Red fruits permeate on the break leaving traces of cherry and apple. Overall Ngogomo cups nicely showcasing honey and dark sugar sweetness. Fruit flavors include ruby red grapefruit, tamarind, and even some grape at darker roasts. There is Mexican hot chocolate throughout, and lots of cocoa in the finish. Ngogomo is a "tight" coffee, with pleasant dryness and acidity verging on black tea with lemon. At Full City we found that the sweet characteristics of Ngogomo become increasingly prevalent as the cup cools.

Bwayi is a washing station (that is, a cooperativewet mill) and part of Sogestal Kayanza. We really liked this coffee at this year's Prestige Cup and purchased at the auction following the event. Bwayi is located in the countries northern province. Although the washing stations sits at 1680 meters above sea level the majority of the coffee is coming from the slopes of the foothills surrounding it anywhere from 1700 - 1900 masl. About 1,000 smallholder farmers comprise the membership at Bwayi. These farmers grow a mix of Bourbon, Mibrizi, Jackon and even SL varietals that were brought decades ago from Kenya. These varietals, great altitude and detailed processing lead to the complex flavors that Bwayi offers us. After delivery to the washing station in the afternoon the coffee beans are depulped from their skins with Mckinnon discs. These discs offers a gentle seed removal with very little damage done to the bean. They also allow the smaller, underripe cherries to pass through to a secondary disc. These Mckinnon machines also offer an initial floating of beans which creates our first density separation. The beans are then fermented overnight, washed and fermented a second a la Kenya. After a final washing the coffee beans are soaked and then pre dried for 48 hours under shade which both protects the soaking wet, and therefore fragile, beans from intense sunlight and makes the potato defect more visible to the human eye. The coffee beans are finished on raised beds under sunlight before being stored in the washing station's warehouse.

Bwayi is lusciously sweet with ripe fruit and spice. Walnut, spiced chocolate, and more extremely sweet spice aromatics like all-spice, cinnamon, clove, etc pop out in the dry fragrance. The crust demonstrated buttery sweetness like caramel and toffee along with sweet corn and oolong tea notes. Fresh cream and brown sugar in the break. Red currant and date are the upfront fruit flavors when the City + was warm. Green apple was present as it cooled. Heavy cream accents the fruit and comes into play with the mouthfeel as well. As the Full City roast cooled a chocolate milk-like character became apparent in both terms of flavor and mouth feel. The City + roast cooled more like prune and dried fruit.