Manhattan – Karimikui 250g | Kenya

Karimikui is a washed coffee from Kirinyaga, Kenya, with a dark-fruited cup of redcurrant, cassis and purple grape, all carried by a juicy mouthfeel. This lot marks its return to Manhattan Coffee Roasters' range.

Karimikui is one of the washing stations, known locally as factories, run by the Rungeto Farmers Cooperative Society, which was founded in 1997. The station takes its name from a tree native to the area and serves around 600 smallholder farmers in the Ngariama sublocation, on the red volcanic soils of Mt. Kenya's slopes at 1,600–1,750 metres above sea level. The varieties are SL28, SL34, Ruiru 11 and Batian.

Coffee here is grown among bananas and maize, under shade trees such as macadamia and grevillea, making for a varied and balanced farming landscape. Membership of Rungeto gives farmers access to social welfare programmes and to credit for farm inputs, education and other essentials, support that strengthens both their livelihoods and the long-term future of coffee in the area.

Quality control starts the moment the cherries arrive, when they are sorted by hand. They are then pulped and left to ferment overnight in concrete tanks to break down the mucilage. After fermentation the coffee is washed, graded by density in clean water channels and given a final soak, before the parchment moves out to raised African beds to dry in the sun. Drying takes between 7 and 15 days, with the parchment turned and sorted by hand throughout so that it dries evenly, and covered at night and whenever the sun is at its strongest.

Freshly roasted by Manhattan Coffee Roasters in Rotterdam and imported to the UK by ROAST EDIT Co.