NOMAD – Nemba 250g | Burundi

About This Coffee

Nemba comes from Burundi's Kayanza province, in the country's north, where NOMAD sources this washed Red Bourbon from the Nemba washing station near the Kibila Forest. More than a thousand smallholders — 1,074 in total, farming an average of 150 trees each — deliver cherry to the station from plots above 1,700 metres, making Nemba one of the larger, more community-driven operations behind this filter roast.

In the cup that translates to real sweetness: dried apricot up front, a thread of honey running through the middle, and a lift of white flowers on the finish. The acidity is mellow, the body silky, and the aftertaste long and pleasant, leaving a honey-like, sweet sensation lingering on the palate.

A lead agronomist oversees the station's Good Agricultural Practice programmes, helping farmers refine everything from pruning to post-harvest handling and giving them the tools and knowledge to optimise their crops. More than 200 drying tables and a 750-tonne annual processing capacity keep quality consistent at scale, even with well over a thousand smallholders supplying cherry. Nemba's work extends beyond the cherry itself, too, with livestock-breeding schemes and cooperative-strengthening programmes aimed at lifting yields and incomes for the wider farming community around the station.

Processing follows a classic washed method: cherries are hand-picked and pulped, then left to ferment before a clean water wash strips away the remaining mucilage. From there the parchment moves to raised beds in the sun, turned regularly until it dries through evenly — a straightforward approach, but one that depends on consistent handling to protect the coffee's clarity through to export.

The variety behind it is Red Bourbon, from the 2025 harvest — a Bourbon strain that's been a mainstay across Burundi's high-altitude growing regions for the clean sweetness and floral character it tends to bring to washed coffees like this one.

Freshly roasted by NOMAD Coffee in Barcelona and imported to the UK by ROAST EDIT Co.