THE COFFEESHOP BURUNDI / Karambo Natural

Karambo Washing Station (Karambo WS), which officially began operations in 2021, is located in Muinga, northeastern Burundi, near Ruvubu National Park. This beautiful hilly area brings together about 1,000 small-scale coffee farmers from four hills (Karambo, Karira, Kiryama, Masasu) who collectively produce coffee here. The batch we are introducing this time is made from coffee cherries grown specifically on the Masasu hill.

In many coffee-producing countries that primarily use the washed process, farmers often begin producing natural or honey processed batches only towards the end of the harvest season. This is mainly to make more efficient use of drying bed space.

However, Karambo WS takes a different approach – they start producing natural and honey processed coffees simultaneously during the peak of the harvest season. This decision stems from their commitment: only by using the highest quality, most mature cherries can they create perfect natural, honey, and even anaerobic natural batches. This demonstrates that it is a washing station with great passion for the natural process.

Upon arrival at the washing station, all cherries are first subjected to flotation to grade their quality. While many washing stations still grade solely by cherry color, Karambo WS places great importance on this flotation step. After flotation, the cherries are moved to African drying beds, where they undergo meticulous manual sorting to completely remove defects, retaining only perfect and ripe red cherries. Subsequently, these carefully selected cherries are painstakingly slow-dried for 3 to 4 weeks.

Whether unroasted green beans or roasted beans, the particle size is extremely uniform, with almost no defects. The high quality is immediately apparent. For the highly challenging natural process, achieving such a consistent rejection rate is truly astonishing and impressive.

This coffee completely lacks the common over-fermentation notes often found in natural processed beans, exhibiting a very clean, juicy, and sweetly elegant profile. It is an excellent representative of specialty coffee.