We are very excited to bring our first Congolese coffee to Artisan Roast from the CPCK smallholder co-operative. The DRC used to be a much more visible producing country thirty years ago and is coming back into the limelight with the support of several, quality focused initiatives. Coffee grows from the shore of the lake at 1500 metres above sea level up into the rolling shade covered hills of the Kivu area. Smallholdings in the DRC, as with neighbouring Rwanda across Lake Kivu, are tiny at around 1 hectare or less. This gives each small holding family a few hundred coffee trees on which to make a livelihood.

Processing in the DRC is similar in style to much of East Africa - small holders deliver their ripe coffee cherries to centralised washing and processing stations where it's further sorted before being pulped. he resulting cup in the CPCK coffee bears all the hallmarks of high quality, high grown red bourbon coffee from the great lakes region. Bold and beautiful red berry flavours of cherry and pomegranate sit alongside treacle toffee and chocolate. These flavours are supported by a syrupy sweet and viscous mouth feel and lead onto a structured black grape like acidity.

This syrupy body and bold fruit character lends the coffee very well to espresso. We've been working on a brew ratio of 1:2.1 at 93 degrees centigrade at the roastery to bring out the cherry and treacle toffee along with a little sweet tamarind on the finish. As a filter the finer more subtle characteristics come into play - a subtle yet heady florality works very well with the cherry notes and structured high quality grape like acidity.

When do we roast your coffee?

We roast at least every Monday and Wednesday (roasting days). Our cut off for planning orders for roasting is 2pm on a roasting date. If an order is received after this cut off it will be prioritised on the next roasting day. Most items will be dispatched the next day (Tuesday and Thursday). If we cannot deliver the goods within this time we will tell you immediately and agree on another time for delivery. If we cannot agree on another time, we will offer you a refund. We use a range of different roaster sizes so we can batch roast exactly what we need for that day. This means that no coffee will leave our roastery older than the previous working day.

Delivery Method

We send your coffee by Royal Mail 1st Class post, which aims to deliver within 1 working day. This is not a guarantee but an aim. Royal Mail will not class an item as lost or missing for 15 working days. Please get in touch if you have not received your order within 7 working days of dispatch. For International delivery to Europe we use the Royal Mail International Standard service. This has a delivery aim of 5-10 days. For International delivery to World Zone 1 & 2 countries we use the Royal Mail International Tracked & Signed service. This has a delivery aim of 5-10 days.

Collection available?

Yes - from Artisan cafes

Delivery prices to United Kingdom