DECAF UGANDA RWENZORI BUGOYE

Recommended Retail Price: £13/250g

Tasting Notes: Exceptionally sweet with black cherry and bramble jam fruitiness alongside dark chocolate and supported by a creamy, full mouthfeel.

Region: Rwenzori
Altitude:  1,700-2,200 m.a.s.l
Variety: SL14, SL28
Processing: Natural, sugarcane decaffeination

After several years of almost exclusively roasting Colombian washed process sugarcane decaf, we found something different for you to try. This coffee has the sweet fruitiness and creamy body that is a hallmark of its natural processing method, and because it was decaffeinated using the sugarcane method those delicious flavours come shining through in the cup. 

Producers

This coffee was grown by smallholders in the town of Bugoye, which sits in the foothills of the Rwenzori mountains in western Uganda. The high altitude, fertile soils and plentiful rainfall provide perfect growing conditions. The farmers sell their coffee to a washing station owned by Kyagalanyi Coffee, which operates seven other stations in the area and operates as an exporter.

There are over 2,000 smallholders in the area who work with Kyagalanyi. Most of them have around one hectare of land, and all work on the farm is conducted by hand, usually by immediate family members. Families work together in groups, usually community-based but sometimes also extended family groups, to process and market their coffee, an approach known as ‘share farming.’ This helps improve processing, better control quality and increases their marketing ability.

Harvesting & Processing 

During the harvest season, Kyagalanyi encourages farmers to deliver cherry to the respective wet mills instead of hand pulping on their farm. This has given the programme increased control over processing activities, which can be challenging in the region as rains during the harvest season are common. Most farmers live up to 50 kilometres away from the washing station. Due to the long distances, Kyagalanyi has a truck that offers free transport services that visits every farmer group 1-2 times per week during harvest season. As the coffee trees flower multiple times, the harvest season is quite long (4-5 months). Farmers normally pick coffee at least once every week.

Kyagalanyi implements a 95% red cherry policy. Farmers are requested to only bring in fully ripe cherry, and this is checked at every collection point. If the quality is not up to standards, farmers will have to sort their cherries at the collection point until 95% red before their coffee is purchased.

This coffee was processed using the natural method. Once delivered the coffee is floated and is then moved to dry on raised beds inside polytunnels. The air is too hot to dry outside uncovered, which can cause cracks in the parchment. Additionally, regular rainfall makes it equally difficult to dry in the open. The cherries stay inside the polytunnels for around 15 days, and drying is controlled by turning the coffee regularly and maintaining an equal depth of cherry on the beds.

Washing Station

At the Bugoye Coffee Station Kyagalanyi offers a programme to producers that incorporates processing infrastructure with agricultural extension services. Additionally, the organization opened their own dry mill in 2015 located in Namanve, situated on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Kampala.

Kyagalanyi aims to build long term relationships with the groups in the region and works closely with them to develop the value chain. The work in the Bakonzo County has only recently begun, but alreadyKyagalanyi is assisting farmers with better market information, improved prices for better quality and advice on how producers can improve their primary processing techniques. This area will soon become part of the Kyagalanyi Coffee Services program which aims to sustainably increase coffee production and quality

Coffee production in Bakonzo County comes with challenges and one of the most pressing ones is climate change. Rainfall is becoming more irregular, with frequent droughts and punishing rainstorms.Temperatures are rising across the board. In these unreliable circumstances, Kyagalanyi plans to play an important role. In other regions, the team has worked to promote ecological buffer zones and shade tree planting in the coffee farms, which helps regulate temperature and curtail erosion from sudden deluges, they also provide training in a wide range of agricultural topics. 

A large field team in this region has just begun to provide a range of extension work to help coffee producers improve coffee production and their livelihoods. As coffee yields are still far below optimal, farmers can easily double productivity. Group training, individual household training, coffee youth teams, demo plots, model farms, coffee nurseries and free cherry collection are all services that the Kyagalanyi team offers to help smallholder families make the most of their land. Improved farm management through this training will make the trees more resilient to climate change and overall, offset any yield reductions due to changing weather patterns.

Variety

Most farmers in the region grow old rootstock SL28 andSL34, interspersed with the occasional SL14, Nyasaland and Bugisu. 

Scott Laboratories (where the abbreviation “SL” came from) was a research organisation based in Kenya that developed multiple cultivars under contract between 1934 and 1963. Scott Labs developed various SL varieties, mostly based on Moka and Bourbon types brought by the Scotch and French missions to Kenya.

Some of the more successful SL varieties are still widely grown in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda today, however, SL 28 and SL 34 are the ones that are most relevant for specialty coffee. It is important to note that by ‘developed’ we mean that the varieties below were ‘selected’ by Scott Labs over time. They are not ‘hybrids’ although they were technically ‘developed’ in a ‘lab’. This specific lot is comprised of SL14 and SL28

Bred in 1931 from Tanganyika D.R., SL 28 has become ubiquitous throughout East Africa and is recognised as a variety of exceptional cup quality. Beans are wide and productivity comparatively low. Though it is not substantiated that we can find, some sources claim that Scott Labs crossed mutations of French Mission, Mocha and Yemen Typica to produce the SL 28 variety. No matter the exact genetic composition, almost certainly their original goal was to create a plant with high quality, reasonable productivity and great drought resistance. SL 28 hits the first objective squarely on the head.

SL14 was selected in 1936 from a single tree labeled Drought Resistant II (D.R. II), and drought tolerance is a noted characteristic of SL14. Historical records documenting the origin of D.R. II were lost, but the seedlings were established at Kabete in 1933 and then widely distributed in areas east of the Rift Valley in Kenya.The variety is now widespread in Kenya and Uganda.

Region

For many, Uganda might not be the first country that comes to mind when thinking of high-quality Arabica coffee, especially since the country has been traditionally known as a producer of Robusta. The country has the ideal climate and geography for coffee production, yet producers do face various infrastructure challenges. The slopes of Mt. Elgon in the East (bordering Kenya) are ideally suited for the production of high-quality specialty coffee.

Benefiting from a bi-modal rainfall season and high altitudes, the country has a pleasant climate year-round and is lush with greenery. The mountain ranges to the east and west are home to Uganda’s Arabica farmers; Robusta is produced on the centra lplateau. 

The Rwenzoris are a mountain range famously known as the ‘Mountains of the Moon.’ They stretch for 120 kilometres along the Western Uganda border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The snow-capped peaks reach over 5,000 metres above sea level and support glaciers that are the start of many rivers flowing down the slopes (including one source of the Nile).The slopes of this range are where the government of Uganda is promoting coffee production as a key driver for rural development. 

The area is also home to the Bakonzo tribe, a people who have farmed the foothills of the Rwenzori for many generations. Coffee offers the Bakonzo farmers a stable income that allows them to support their families and develop their homes. The coffee is grown under the shade of banana trees, while the mixed farms also produce cassava, maize, beans and groundnuts for local consumption and additional income.

Decaffeination

This lot underwent the Ethyl Acetate decaffeination process at the Coffin Compagnie in Bremen, also known as the Sugarcane Decaf or Natural Decaf Process.The special EA process preserves the high quality of the green beans, whilst successfully removing the caffeine content. 

Ethyl acetate occurs naturally in fruits, and this is why it is the best natural option for decaffeination. For this process, sugars from sugarcane are fermented to create ethyl alcohol. This is then mixed with acetic acid to create ethyl acetate.The EA decaffeination process begins with a pretreatment steaming the coffee beans at a low pressure to remove the silver skin, or the thin layer of skin on the coffee beans. The coffee beans are then moistened with hot water to swell and soften, to catalyze the hydrolysis (the chemical breakdown of a substance due to reaction with water) of the caffeine. Essentially, the caffeine is bonded to chlorogenic acid inside the coffee, and this process breaks them apart to remove the caffeine. 

The beans are then moved through an extractor, where they are repeatedly washed with the natural solvent, ethyl acetate. This occurs several times in order to remove 97% of the caffeine content within the coffee. Surprisingly, the weight of the coffee is reduced by 3%. The EA method gently extracts the caffeine from the coffee without using excessive heat that may damage the beans. Once this process is complete, a flow of low-pressure steam is passed over the beans to remove any remaining ethyl acetate, which will evaporate at 70°C once the coffee beans are roasted. Lastly, the coffee is vacuum-dried until the moisture content of the coffee is brought back to the original moisture level when it arrives at the EA processing facility–typically between 10-12%.