Horsham Coffee Roaster - Rwanda Gishyita Relationship Coffee

In May this year Bradley spent a week travelling around Rwanda visiting co-operatives and washing stations. While over there he had the opportunity to cup some fantastic Rwandan coffees. This is our first venture into developing direct relationships with farmers in a producing country and have selected several different lots from a few co-operatives. Most of these are located in western Rwanda close to the shore of lake Kivu.

This is our second lot of this season. The Gishyita co-operative is located at an altitude of 1650 masl overlooking lake Kivu. There are 105 co-operative members who harvest and deliver cherries from their red bourbon varietal trees. All co-operative members do a minimum of one day of work per week at the washing station helping with the processing and sorting process. The cherries are sorted firstly using a floatation tank and then fully washed and fermented followed by another washing stage. Drying and hand sorting takes place on raised tables for a period of about 12 days. We were so impressed by the attention to detail at the hand sorting stage and this contributes to the outstanding flavours in the cup.

We are really excited to be working with this co-operative on a relationship level. We are currently working on a proposal for improvement works at the washing station and intend to help through a funding program. This will allow them to increase their volume of speciality coffee production and help to improve efficiency. You can view photos by clicking on the link to our Gishyita gallery on flickr.