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KENYA THIRIKWA GAKUYU – INI

TASTES LIKE BLACK CURRANT, PANELA & LEMON

Gakuyu-ini is located in Kirenyaga County in the Central highlands of Kenya. The factory is a set in a beautiful, fertile and forested location and is surrounded by thousands of smallholder subsistence farmers who grow coffee as a cash crop alongside potatoes, bananas, mangoes, avocados and some livestock. As a co-operative its membership consists of 1,553 smallholder farmers, of whom 674 are women. The average altitude of these smallholdings is approximately 1,650 MASL. The growers have the advantage of deep and rich soils that were created from the ash of the extinct volcano – Mount Kenya.

The  Gakuyu-ini factory processes coffee using methods typical throughout Kenya. Ripe coffee cherries are picked between October and January and these are pulped using disc pulpers in the wet mill before undergoing a dry fermentation process followed by soaking and washing the coffee. Next the coffee, covered in a layer of parchment is allowed to dry under the sun upon raised beds. The coffee then undergoes a period of storage or ‘resting’ before being delivered to a mill where the parchment will be removed, and the coffee screened and cleaned to remove any defects ready for export.