From the great lakes of East Africa all the way to Ann Arbor
If you check rankings based on coffee production volumes by country, Burundi will be way down at the bottom. It’s 29th on the list of volume coffee producers—the tiny East African country contributes only .2% of the world’s beans. But if you shift the filter on the search list to make quality count first, Burundi will most likely move near the top. The tiny country is producing some of the tastiest cups around. The Burundi we’ve got on hand as the Coffee of the Month is so delicious I’ve been happily drinking it as my daily brew of choice.
Burundi, in case you’re not already familiar, was an independent kingdom for 500 years before being taken over by German colonial expansion in 1887. Belgians took political control after the First World War. Fortunately, it was free again in 1962. Coffee was brought to the country by the Belgians, with much the same sort of painful history that I shared last month about its introduction into the Chiapas region of Mexico in the 19th century. In Burundi, coffee came later, but the story is still similar. One elderly Burundian, a farmer now in his 80s, shares,
I started growing coffee when Burundi was still colonized by Belgians. During that time growing coffee was very different compared to today. First of all, we were growing coffee by force. Sometimes, we were beaten. We had no idea of what we were doing. What I remember is that they used to tell us that we must cultivate coffee, because it will help us in the future.
Although I started cultivating coffee by force, I didn’t stop when the Belgians left the country because I realized that what they had told us was true. I have seen the benefits of the coffee crop in my family’s life. When I’ve gotten money from coffee, I’ve paid for school fees, bought clothes, and paid my workers. I will cultivate coffee for the rest of my life.
The beans come to us from the farmers of the Kibingo Washing Station in Burundi’s Kayanza Province, a bit south of Burundi’s border with Rwanda, in East Africa’s Great Lakes region. It’s nestled between the Great Lakes (much as Ann Arbor is) and the area has a reputation for being one of the best coffee-producing regions in Burundi. The weather in the region is mild, with an average annual temperature somewhere in the mid-60s. Beans are grown at nearly 6000 feet above sea level. The beans come from a series of small, quality-conscious farms around the commune—many still walk their beans to the processing stations. After drying, the beans are hand-sorted to ensure the highest quality are sent to folks like us here in Ann Arbor for roasting.
This is farming that’s the opposite of 20th-century agribusiness—the average farmer in Burundi has only about two and a half hundred trees. It’s basically “backyard farming” in much the same way that the best Telicherry pepper from India would be (try the fantastic Pepper Fries at the Roadhouse!). Each tree yields an average of just over three pounds of coffee fruit so the typical farmer has only about 400 to 650 pounds of coffee “cherries” annually. The Kibingo Washing Station also functions as a source of supplies and information—farmers can get organic fertilizer made from composted coffee pulp and access to very low-cost, subsidized coffee seedlings! In the context of what I wrote last week about consensus, the farmers work in a very inclusive and collaborative fashion. Groups of about 30 people are led by a farm leader/facilitator to keep communication flowing and help keep decision-making effective.
The Burundi Kibingo has been pretty darned terrific every way I’ve tried it. Very tasty right off the big batch urn we brew in. It is really good as an iced pour over—the same flavors are still there, but they’re brought more to the fore. More tart fruit—maybe cranberry, apricot, a bit of citrus. The Burundi Kibingo is especially excellent as an espresso—really nutty, lots of roundness in the flavor, high notes with a happy finish, maybe a smidgen of toasted sesame.
Burundians celebrated their independence day last month under the theme “Economic independence, the basis of national sovereignty.” The more of this delicious coffee we all consume, the better we can help them make that happen!
