This month at Blue Coffee Box, we are featuring 6 new gourmet coffees for September. Instead of doing a post on each coffee, we decided to put them all in one place for you.
Below you will find the list, as well as the roasters we are sourcing these coffees from this month as well.
Gourmet Coffees for September
Duhoho Village
Producer: 14 Farmers
Varietals: Hybrid de Timor, Typica
Processing: Fermentation
Altitude: 1400-1600m
Country: East Timor
Region: Letefoho
Cupping Notes: Raspberry, lemon, dark chocolate, black pepper
Roaster: Coffee Central
This coffee from the exotic origin of East Timor, Duhoho is produced by 18 smallholders who reside in Duhoho village in the south-west of Asia's newest independent country, East Timor.
Duhoho village is located in the centre of Letefoho town where coffee growers from other villages visit twice a week to buy and sell daily necessities at a local market.
Duhoho members pay a great degree of attention to harvest only fully ripe cherries and avoid contamination of defective ones. The harvest finishes just after lunch to process all the cherries within the same day.
All the harvests of the day go through a floater selection to eliminate insect-damaged beans followed by a de-pulping (wet-processing) with a traditional pulping machine that each farmer possess.
After the cherries are removed, parchments are sorted again with a floater selection and fermented for 36 hours. Parchments are then washed, sun-dried on drying tarpaulins.
The result is a delicious organic certified coffee with satisfying complex acidity and sweetness.
Koperasi Permata Gayo
Producer: Permata Gayo Cooperative
Varietals: Gayo-1, Gayo-2, Ateng
Processing: Semi-Washed
Altitude: 1200-1600m
Country: Sumatra
Region: Bener Meriah-Aceh, Aceh
Cupping Notes: Clove, cinnamon, orange, toffee
Roaster: Coffee Central
Permata Gayo was founded in 2006 in the Aceh Province of Sumatra. The goal was to guarantee more traceability along the supply chain from where the coffee is grown in Aceh to the port of Belawan.
By managing the full process from growing the coffee, processing it and exporting it, Permata Gayo has gained more control of the quality of their coffee and the cup profile has improved over the years as a result to the excellent coffee produced today.
Recently Permata Gayo has built their own Wet/Dry Mill after a two-year project. It is the only cooperative in Aceh which can control the quality of the cherries.
They have also built a canopy with their Fairtrade Premium to better dry the coffee and therefore reduce the risk of mould and fungus when drying coffee during the rainy season.
Majinja AA
Producer: Majinja Farmer Estates
Varietals: Heirloom Typica, SL28
Processing: Wet Processed
Altitude: 1600-1700m
Country: Tanzania
Region: Ibembwe, Msia, Mbozi and Songwe
Cupping Notes: Apple, orange, caramel, butterscotch
Roaster: Olfactory Coffee Roasters
Arabica seedlings were first introduced to the country in the 16th century from Ethiopia and Réunion (Bourbon) Island.
They were traditionally chewed' as a stimulant by the Haya tribe, who came to use coffee beans as currency Sourced from the Manjinja Farmer Group, which is currently made up of 20 farmers in the Ibembwe, Msia, Mbozi and Songwe regions, grown between 1,600 and 1,700 meters.
The name Majinja is derived from the name of the clan of the owner of the factory. In the 2015-2016 season, interest from neighbouring farmers to join together to produce fully washed coffees began what is known today as the Majinja Farmer Group.
Coffee is fully washed with water from the Tumkaki river, fermented in tanks, graded based on density, soaked in tanks and dried on raised beds. The parchment is then handpicked on the drying tables to remove defects.
Fazenda Cruzeiro
Producer: Cláudio Ottoni
Varietals: Rubi
Processing: Natural
Altitude: 1000m
Country: Brazil
Region: Araxá, Cerrado Mineiro
Cupping Notes: Red grape, raspberry, cocoa butter
Roaster: Olfactory Coffee Roasters
Purchased in 2009 by Cláudio Ottoni, the farm started with 130 hectares of coffee.
Today the plantation has expanded to 200 hectares. The majority is planted under Red Catuaí 144 variety, which composes some 80% of Fazenda Cruzeiro's total production; other varieties include Mundo Novo Acaiá (15%) and Rubi (5%).
The Ottoni family always seeks to use the most sustainable growing practices and stewardship of the land. Over 140 hectares of the farm is devoted to wildlife preservation.
Sierra Azul
Producer: 200+ members of Café Sierra Azul
Varietals: Typica, Bourbon, Mundo Novo
Processing: Washed
Altitude: 1000-1900m
Country: Mexico
Region: Siltepec, Chiapas
Cupping Notes: Hazelnut, pecan, walnut
Roaster: Coffee Compass
Café Sierra Azul is a relatively small cooperative that brings together just over 200 small
Named for the bluish hue of the tree-covered mountains of the Reserve (the Sierra Azul, in Spanish), the organisation's members are unified not only in improving the livelihoods of communities across the municipality of Siltepec and beyond but also in their aim of producing the region's best speciality coffee.
Café Azul's mission goes beyond great coffee. Some 60% of the organisation's members are young men, many of whom earned the money they used to start their farms by working illegally in the United States.
This method of earning a living has long been the standard in rural regions of Chiapas, but it highly precarious and is potentially damaging to families and communities.
By making it possible to actually make a living off of a small farm (the group average is 3 hectares) the organisation is keeping families together and helping communities to thrive.
Aramo
Producer: Aram Cooperative
Varietals: Indigenous heirloom
Processing: Washed
Altitude: 1900-2100m
Country: Ethiopia
Region: Yirgacheffe
Cupping Notes: Passionfruit, milk chocolate, Medjool dates
Roaster: Coffee Compass
Aramo is in Yirgacheffe district in the Southern Nations, Nationalities & Peoples' (SNNP) region of Ethiopia. The indigenous heirloom' varietals - which grow wild in Ethiopia - give unique flavour notes for an unusual but beautifully refined cup.
650 farms, each of roughly 2 hectares per farmer grow in fertile, red-brown, well-drained soil with 1.5m depth. This creates Grade 1 coffee with a Screen Size of 14+. Ripe cherries are delivered to the wet mill for careful sorting and pulping, before fermentation for 36-48 hours.
The parchment coffee is then thoroughly washed and graded before being dried in the sun on raised African beds for 12 - 15 days. In the daytime, the parchment is raked and turned periodically and covered between 12 pm and 3 pm to protect it from the hot sun, and at night time to protect it from rainfall and moisture.
Dried to the right level, it is transported to Addis Ababa for dry-milling, grading, intensive sorting and handpicking, before being bagged for export.
For more speciality coffees like these, be sure to subscribe to Blue Coffee Box. You can check out our past featured coffees here.
