Burundi Kigina Hill One Roast
Burundi Kigina Hill
Here is Burundi Kigina Hill, the second of 4 naturals we will be offering over the coming weeks. Kigina Hill is a washing station part of Migoti. Creating washing stations where coffee is grown gives coffee a chance of being processed better and also takes the exhaustion out of moving coffee after a long day’s picking. I was lucky enough to meet Dan Brose recently, one of the two engineers who founded the Migoti project in 2015. This coffee is via our friends at Omwani who help us source amazing coffees from parts of East Africa. They are a growing team, with their hearts in the right place.
Top Trumps:
Mill: Kigina Hill
Area: Bujumbura, Burundi
Varietal: Red Bourbon
Process: Natural. Sun-dried, Raised beds, over 28 days approx.
Soil: Sandy, Loam, Clay
Average farm size: 1-5 Acres
Average Farms per lot: 500-2000.
Roast: One Roast
Filter Profile
|Aromatics: Ripe brown fruit |Body: Creamy on cooling| Acidity: Low and sweet|
Kigina grew on me. Initially, it was shy, but just got better and better.
Low, deep, soft sweet fruit that you could almost swim in. Floral, black tea, sweet like melon and peach with a citrus twist on the finish. After an hour on the bench, this is still sweet with a touch of pine. What a coffee?
Filter Recipe: 60-65g per litre
Espresso: This coffee was set up at 95C
I need to investigate why, but after three weeks from roast, this coffee is brewing as well at 94C as it was at 96. Naturally, this is dependent on what you like in coffee, of course, but with resting the solubility or strength of flavour was noticeably better after 3 weeks.
Recipe for milk-based drinks. 18g of coffee into 33-34g of espresso.
8-9oz Milk-based drink: Creamy, tropical fruit and butterscotch.
5-6oz Milk-based drink: Ripe fruit, buttery, subtle citrus, ripe soft fruit. “lush” on cooling!
Espresso Recipe:
17-18g into 60g in 30-35 seconds 50-60ml. This is where personal preference comes in. I tried this as a short juicy espresso and it lacked something. Extending the liquid in the espresso became more like the best bits of the filter. There is nothing to say that you couldn’t increase the brew temperature, which could make your life easier. More liquid was more for me. Stone fruit and pithy grapefruit.
Farm Stuff
Kigina Hill washing station is an out-lyer from the main Migoti Hill station. Moving the coffee cherries to Migoti negatively affected quality. Kigina Hill is close to Kinama, where this lot was processed as it was designed to service the farmers on this part of the mountain. It is one thing to manually harvest coffee on a mountainside and another to carry your crop 4 km away and start processing it at the end of the day.
This year there have been fuel and water shortages. This made it an easier decision to produce more naturally processed coffees this season!
Let us know how you’re brewing here