A brief introduction to the History and Culture of the Origin and Development of Fine Coffee beans in Kimmel Manor, Rwanda

Rwanda is like a friend with a distinct personality in life, at first contact will stay away because of the other person's too distinct personality, but after really getting to know each other, he will be attracted by his unique temperament. Rwanda is such a guy with great personality, with the improvement and improvement of Rwandan coffee in all aspects, its quality has also made a qualitative leap. In the 2008 COE contest held by the American Fine Coffee Association SCAA, Arnomega, Rwanda, beat the Blue Mountain 1 of Jamaica and Mantenin G1 of Sumatra to defend the title. Rwandan coffee has won a place in the coffee world because of its excellent quality, and has won more attention. Most of Rwandan coffee is washed. The water washing method will first wash and flotation the ripe coffee fruit, then remove the exocarp, pulp and part of the pectin layer, then send the coffee into the fermentation tank, remove the remaining pectin layer and then send it to the drying ground for drying treatment, so that the water content reaches about 13%. The coffee in the picture above is dried on an African shed to avoid the smell of dirt. It is more ventilated and mildew can be avoided. During the drying process, coffee farmers will also turn the beans regularly to make the drying more even. at the same time, they will choose beans of poor quality and abandon Rwanda, which has been growing coffee since colonial times, although the crops are mainly coffee. However, the quality of the coffee produced in Lu is not outstanding, the status in the coffee world is low, and few people care about it. Most of the coffee varieties grown in Rwanda are bourbon. Rwanda, known as the "country of a thousand hills", has a high-altitude mountain environment, fertile volcanic soil and abundant precipitation, and has a climate conducive to the growth of coffee trees. The advantages of varieties and excellent natural conditions should have produced high-quality coffee, but why the quality of its coffee performance is not satisfactory? The reason lies in the later stage of processing. Improper handling will reduce the quality of coffee and sacrifice a lot of good flavor in vain. Harvesting, planting, treatment, grading, transportation and other links will directly affect the quality of raw coffee beans, in which the lack of control in a certain link will become a stumbling block to good coffee.

The coffee fruit needs to be transported to the processing plant as soon as possible after picking, but due to the lack of domestic facilities, it is unable to deal with the fruit at the first time. The fruits are piled up after being picked, which will continue to develop and accelerate mildew and decay due to lack of ventilation. Rotten fruits will affect the quality of coffee and show defective flavor.

In recent years, Rwanda has made great progress in the production and processing of coffee. First of all, coffee fruits are picked manually; coffee production cooperatives are set up all over the country to provide technical guidance to coffee farmers; coffee farmers send them to coffee processing stations for cleaning and screening as soon as possible after picking, and select mature and high-quality coffee fruits for processing.

Rwandans have been growing coffee since colonial times, but until 1999, its products were still classified as below Class C and in the global market.

No one cares about it. The reason for the poor quality is that farmers do not have a fixed procedure for washing coffee beans and do not process coffee fruits according to specifications in time. Buyers buy coffee beans at $0.33 per kilogram, and farmers are fed and clothed by meagre profits earned at low prices, but remain poor.

In 1999, 220 coffee growers formed guilds in the Malaba area (formerly part of Butare province) to address the disease. Among the guild members, many farmers were separated from their loved ones by the 1994 mass massacre, while some husbands were jailed or were taken to the traditional Gacaca Court (gacaca) to face trial on charges of participating in the massacre. They named the guild "Abau Zam Gambi" (Abahuzamugambi), which means "people who work together to achieve their goals" in Rwandan. Farmers hope that by setting up this association, they will be able to work directly with Geely's exporters instead of peeling layers of skin through intermediary transportation companies, so as to increase profits. Farmers distribute their profits and spend them on tools, fertilizers and seeds to increase production.

In 2000, the Mayor of Malaba requested development assistance from the National University of Rwanda (UNR), which is located near the city of Butare, and the following year, the National University of Rwanda assisted in the establishment of the Joint strengthening Rwanda Agricultural Partnership (PEARL). The PEARL project is also supported by several organizations: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Michigan State University, Texas A & M University, and many other Rwandan organizations, including the National University of Rwanda, the National Agricultural Laboratory (ISAR) and the Gejali Institute of Technology Management (KIST). In February 2001, PEARL began working with Abauzam Gamby to improve the quality of coffee to meet the standards of the professional coffee market in the United States, and then sell the coffee to the United States.

The first problem for Malaba coffee farmers is to set up a cleaning station. The coffee fruit must be transported to the cleaning station to wash the sugar under the skin of the coffee bean within 12 hours after picking, otherwise the flavor of the coffee will be greatly damaged. In July 2001, with funding from UNR, the Ministry of Culture and Industry of Rwanda (Office des Cultures Industrielles du Rwanda,OCIR-Caf é), ACDI/VOCA and ISAR, they set up the first cleaning station near the main road in the Serenb district (Cyarumbo). However, the cleaning station was not opened until the harvest time, so only 200 kilograms (441 pounds) of the harvest were washed that year. However, the result was surprisingly good. In 2002, the cleaning station was upgraded to supply more coffee processing. ACDI/VOCA is responsible for funding the construction of pipelines to bring in Mount Huye mineral water and help improve the efficiency of cleaning stations. The pipeline was opened in March 2002.

During the 2002 harvest season, Rwanda introduced a new certification system to ensure that coffee beans shipped to cleaning stations are of proper quality. About half of Abauzam Gambi's members are certified, and cooperatives are able to find buyers in professional markets in Europe and North America.

Be recognized by the world

Malaba coffee beans are manually selected and classified according to their quality.

Malaba coffee beans are manually selected and classified according to their quality.

PEARL brought coffee experts to Rwanda to maintain contact with the seller, the Public Coffee Company (Community Coffee) in Louisy, USA, and sent samples to Louisiana. In June 2002, representatives of public coffee visited Malaba. At that time, the current President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, declared the importance of the plan on behalf of the government. Public Coffee bought 18000 kilograms (40000 pounds) of Malaba beans at $3 per kilogram above the average market price. Coffee beans are shipped to Louisiana, where they are roasted locally and used in the company's delicate coffee. This is also the first direct contract between an American roaster company and an African coffee cooperative.

The flavor of Rwanda is ashamed of the biased perception of Rwanda in the first place. I still remember that when I first came into contact with coffee, smell training was very resistant to No. 3 in the 36-smell bottle, and I even felt nauseous when I smelled it. So subjectively, I always like to make up the taste similar to grass automatically for the smell of green peas. Due to the lack of experience in tasting and production, we will subjectively list the grass and lavender-like aroma that Rwanda has as its own conflicting flavor. So when the production of Rwanda smelled its individual lavender fragrance, the coffee glutton shrank back to its stomach. However, with the improvement of taste and production experience, there is a new understanding of Rwanda with its individual fragrance.

Before sharing this article with you, in order to have a more objective evaluation of Rwanda, it is specially evaluated by cup test. Well-baked water-washed Rwanda has a dry aroma of roasted peanuts, accompanied by spice and wood aromas. The fragrance of wet lavender and green grass is strong. After the temperature drops a little, the sweetness of fruit increases, and the smell of lavender decreases. The palate is clean and mellow, with a good finish and a long-lasting aroma. The acidity is soft and the overall feeling is full and stretched.