Dukunde Kawa
$18.00
Origin: Gakenke, Rwanda
What we taste: Lemon Pound Cake, Bellini, Graham Cracker
Dukunde Kawa Musasa is a cooperative of around 1,000 smallholder farmers in the Gakenke District in Rwanda’s Northern Province. Out of the roughly 1,000 farmers, 80% are women. Many of the farms that make up this cooperative are so small that they are not measured by acre but by individual tree count. This cooperative was founded in 2000 with a single wet mill, and has since grown to have four wet mills and a state of the art dry mill. This particular coffee was processed at the Mbilima mill, which was the third mill constructed in 2007. Over the years, Dukunde Kawa Musasa has worked hard to help shift the Rwandan coffee paradigm from producing quantity to taking the time to produce the best quality coffee possible. They even started a coffee school last year to help educate future generations of Rwandan coffee farmers. This release from Dukunde Kawa is a Natural process coffee. The coffee cherries are picked and sorted first by hand, then by flotation, and then finally by a specialized cherry sorting machine. This ensures that the densest coffee cherries are separated out to produce this natural coffee, while the less dense cherries are sent to be processed as washed process coffee. Once the coffee is sorted, it is laid out on drying beds to dry for roughly 25 days, depending on weather and ambient humidity. During this time, the coffee is sorted further by hand to remove any physical defects and regularly turned to ensure even drying. All of this care and attention has helped produce a true gem of a coffee!
