Description
Kirimahiga AA – Kenya
Kirimahiga AA comes from Murang´a, in the highlands of central Kenya, one of the country's historic coffee-growing areas. The plantations are spread across the slopes of the Aberdare Range, on deep red volcanic soils, in a cool, humid environment. The washing station that gives the lot its name is located at about 1,700 m a.s.l., with annual rainfall of 1,200 to 1,400 mm and temperatures of between 18 and 25 °C. The two rainy seasons support two production cycles: the main harvest, linked to the rains from April to June, and a secondary one, associated with those of October and November.
Cooperative and producers
The Kirimahiga washing station belongs to New Kiriti Farmers Cooperative Society, in the Mathioya district, about 200 kilometres north of Nairobi. The cooperative was registered in 1998, although coffee has been grown there since the 1960s, and it has 1,595 registered members, of whom 781 are active. It manages three stations – Gondo, Kirimahiga and Kayu – all in the band known as Upper Midland. The farms are smallholdings of around 0.25 acres, with an average of close to 100 coffee trees, planted mostly with SL28, SL34 and Ruiru 11, the varieties that make up this lot.
Management rests with an executive committee of seven elected members, together with a supervisory committee of three people that reviews the management and answers to the producers at the Annual General Meeting. Day-to-day work is run by the management and administration manager, with 19 permanent employees and an average of 25 seasonal workers.
Process
Harvesting is manual and selective, and the cherry reaches the station the same day. Before pulping, the ripe red cherries are separated by hand from the green ones, the overripe ones and foreign matter. Processing is wet, with clean water from the River Gondo: after pulping, the coffee goes through a controlled fermentation, followed by washing and a preparation phase before drying. Drying is done in the sun on raised African beds, turning the parchment so that it dries evenly. Once dry, the coffee is sent in parchment to the dry mill, where grading and preparation are completed, resulting in the AA grade. The station recirculates the processing water before channelling it to evaporation and infiltration pits, to limit the impact of wet processing Kirimahiga AA – Kenyaon the environment.
