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Kenya Handege AB
Mango • Papaya • Coconut

• Location: Kiambu, Kenya
• Elevation: 5700ft
• Variety: SL 28, Ruiru 11
• Processing: Fully Washed
• Harvest Period: Dec 2021

From our friends at Red Fox:

The name, Handege, is derived from Ndege, the Swahili word for airplane. Handege Coffee factory is affiliated with Ritho Farmers’ Cooperative Society. This society is located in Gatundu location, Kiambu County and it was founded in 1972.

Nowhere are coffees as thoroughly cleaned as they are in Kenya. The typical process looks something like this: after depulping, coffee beans are left to ferment. Then, after 24 hours they are washed and left to ferment again, without water, for another 12-24 hours. The parchment is then washed before being soaked in tanks for another period of roughly 12-18 hours. At this stage, the beans are moved to skin drying beds where they are laid out in thin layers to allow the mass of water weight to fall. This happens over the course of a morning. This entire process is sometime referred to as the 72 hour process. From there the coffee goes to raised drying beds for the next 8 to 12 days. By the end of this process, the coffee is as clean as a whistle. The work is already done. Not a drop of mucilage will be found on the pristinely white parchment, and no extra flavor is imparted to the beans except by what happened at the farm and in the fermentation tanks.