DISCLAIMER! Check every dose for rocks!
This rarest of natural Kenyan coffees is a real bargain and the first drop in our new Misfits range of post-specialty coffees. It had a bumpy ride to get here.
We were visiting our good friends at Falcon Coffee, and they showed us a couple bags of coffee they’d bought for their brilliant ‘Micro’ line. However, this coffee had not been sorted well at origin and included plenty of defective beans, broken beans, small stones, and other detritus. Normally this kind of coffee would just get composted since there’s not a good way of sorting it here in the UK. But that would be a shame since this is the first time that farmer James has produced a natural coffee (highly unusual for Kenya) and it’s actually one of the first tiny harvests from his farm called Small Eden. It’s also FLIPPING DELICIOUS with notes of Pomegranate, Horned Melon, and Kiwi. You could say it's a stone’s throw away from a good coffee.
So we ran the coffee through our optical color sorter at multiple different settings both as green coffee and after roasting. This machine finds and removes defective coffee beans, and we’ve sorted it 4 times now. This coffee contains some some smaller pieces than normal, and there could still be a stone or two that makes it through, so please check the coffee visually before you put it in your grinder! Salvaging this coffee has enabled us to ensure that James still gets paid, which otherwise wouldn’t have happened. By drinking it, you’re getting a screaming deal on one of the best Kenyan coffees of the year while making the coffee world a little more fair.
Here’s a little more about the coffee farm:
Small Eden is a beautiful piece of land situated in Ol Jabet, 20 kilometers from Nyahururu town, towards Rumuruti Town. It is in Laikipia County, west of Mt. Kenya, 184 kilometers from Nairobi City. The Small Eden Orchards farm is owned by James, a 30-year coffee veteran who’s worked as a coffee quality controller and trader. He planted 675 seedlings on an experimental basis in 2022 and just brought in his first harvest this year. Production is promising and he has since planted an additional 1,116 seedlings.
The area became a settlement scheme in the 1970s. Due to its remoteness, people did not settle in big numbers and large chunks of land remain unoccupied. Farmers around this area have been growing other cash crops such as wheat, maize, and beans. New settlers have recently introduced crops such as avocado, macadamia, and coffee. In the near future, we expect to see an increase in coffee production.
Altitude: 2144m
Variety: Arabica, SL 28
Cup score: 87.5
Price paid per kg: £10
Process: Sundried Natural