Kenya Nyeri Rumukia Peaberry

This is a traditional double-washed coffee from Nyeri, Kenya, produced by smallholders organized around the Rumukia Cooperative Society. The flavor profile is very sweet and full of ripe fruit tones as well as notes of caramel, lavender tea, and melon.

Coffees like this multi-station blend from a tiny cooperative society rarely come along. The summer stone fruits you eat over the sink straight from the farmers’ market. The canary melons so lush, sprinkled with tajin. The wild blackberries plucked straight from the vine on your hike around the lake. This is as a summery coffee, though only in the memories it evokes.

Hear more from the Team at Royal Coffee: We found the quintessential Kenyan coffee in this little microlot – it’s a classic Nyeri (maybe Kenya’s most famous coffee-producing county), it’s a peaberry, and it’s fantastically delicious. Rumukia – or New Rumukia Farmers Cooperative Society – is one of Nyeri’s smaller coop societies, with just under 1200 members and three washing stations, aka factories: Thunguri, Gaikundu, and Kagunyu. Their 2022-2023 harvest intake was reported at 224,300 kg of coffee cherry, roughly 188kg per member.

Processing here happens in much the same way as it has for decades, with a unique post-processing clean water soak acting as an additional washing step. This procedure has two-fold benefits, in that it can pragmatically help to delay moving coffee from the pulpery to the drying tables if there is a limitation on available drying space, and it also provides a measure of quality improvement identified by academic researchers and coffee tasters alike.

Great specs here, as usual – a nicely prepped peaberry blend from three washing stations in Nyeri County. It screens out on the large size for PB, at mostly 16+, with a surprising range all the way up to SS19. Don’t let the wide variance bother you; however, the coffee roasts as consistently as any peaberry we’ve come across. Otherwise, the coffee is nicely dried and just a touch above average density.