Horsham Coffee Roaster: Rwanda, Bwishaza - Thick, Natural

For every kilo of Rwandan coffee sold we will ensure a tree is planted in the Gishwati-Mukura forest in Rwanda. For more information visit our OneTreePlanted page.

We first visited Rwanda in 2014 and over the last few years we've developed some very close relationships within the Rwandan coffee community. We first visited Bwishaza co-operative in 2015 and have been buying coffee from them every year.

Bwishaza co-operative is located north of Kibuye close to lake Kivu. You can view the exact location via the link to google maps. The co-operative traditionally focused on producing speciality washed coffees in lot sizes of 50 x 60kg bags. We still buy these larger lots as the cups scores are often very good and their best lots score around the 86 mark. In 2015 we asked the board members if they would be interested in producing some smaller experimental lots to include naturals and washed lots.

The co-operative produces two natural process microlots specifically for using a technique that we first proposed three years ago. This microlot is the 'thick layer' natural. This means that the coffee cherry was layed out to dry on the raised beds in a thin layer about 2 inches in depth show in the photo below:

The thick layer means the cherries dry fairly slowly increasing the fermentation and resulting in more intense fruit notes that include red grape and dried prunes. We are very pleased with the results and we pay a significant premium (2.5 times the Fairtrade price) to the co-operative for the extra work they put in to create this microlot.