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Beans: Fazenda Specialty Coffee, Oldonyo Sapuk, SL28/Ruiru11, Natural, Ruiru, Kenya.
Shop: Fazenda, Mocca D’or, webshop, The Netherlands.
Fazenda – Kenya (Oldonyo Sapuk): Background information.
Fazenda Specialty Coffee is the specialty coffee branch that sprouted from the famous Mocca D’or coffee brand in The Netherlands. Fazenda is a fairly new specialty coffee brand and focusses on coffees that score at least 80+ points on a scale of 100. This means that they focus on quality and lean towards high ends coffees for their customers.
This Kenya is a new addition to their assortment and was sourced by Niels ten Vaanhold and Judith Konsten (among others). This coffee comes from the Oldonyo Sapuk Farm near the Ol Donyo Sabuk mountain in the Ruiru region in Kenya.
The words Ol Donyo Sabuk mean “large mountain” in Maa – a tribal language spoken by the Maasai community in Kenya. This coffee is from the Ol Donyo Sabuk Coffee farm located in Machakos County. A region with great coffees that need to be highlighted and shared more with the rest of the coffee world. Machakos County is located in Kenya’s Eastern Highlands, about 100 km from Nyeri County. The weather in this region is perfect for other crops such as fruit trees, avocado and banana trees, that help substitute producer income , bee keeping is another popular activity as well.
The coffee has undergone a Natural process which is sometimes referred to as ‘’the dry process,’’. The coffee is dried inside the intact coffee cherry and as such requires little to no water. Ripe coffee cherries are harvested and laid out on raised coffee beds where they are raked and turned frequently to maintain even drying. In this process the sugars and flavours of the cherry itself are imparted to the bean contributing to a natural coffee characteristic.
Opening the package.
Fazenda Specialty Coffee packages it’s coffees in a chique and high end way with a beautifully designed carton box. Inside you will find the bag with beans that has a degassing valve, yet no ziplock.
The box is well designed and depicts the beautiful logo of Fazenda. Notice how the A in the name is upside down and looks like a V60 filter brewer with a droplet of coffee coming out at the bottom? Thats just clever and beautyfull.
On the front side of the package you can read about the tasting notes immediately as well as the roasting profile (filter/espresso).
On the top of the package you will find the origine, farm, variety and process. There is also a QR-code that brings you directly to the webpage of the Fazenda Kenya. On the back side of the package you can read about the Mocca D’or foundation and about the mission of Fazenda Specialty coffee.
When opening the package of the Kenya you will smell a hint of tea, cookies and berry fruityness. The beans look evenly roasted eventhough there are two varieties inside this coffee. The beans are crispy and give off a fruity and tea-like flavour. After chewing a little more there is a soft jammy berry flavour popping up and the usual slight bitterness as well as a salty note. In the end you will get a little tobacco as well.
Grinding the coffee gives off aroma’s of black berry, black pepper and a hint of wood. Let’s brew!
The Tasting.
When I received the coffee from Fazenda Specialty Coffee I got a recipe that I should try out:
18/300gr at 82 degrees, pouring in steps of 75ml per pour and finish at around 3:30.
Obviously I also used my own ‘safe’ review recipe: 15/225 at 96 degrees, pouring at 80/120/180 and ending at around 2:00 mins. Both gave off similar results but with the Fazenda recipe the Vanilla note was more profound.
When brewing this coffee the aroma’s that appear while it’s hot are those of black tea and a hint of lemon. During the latter stages of brewing and when pouring the coffee into a glass, I got a note of green rose leafs, vanilla, sugared tea and a mix of caramel and chocolate. Even better where the berrie notes that appeared stronger and stronger: red berries (red currant), blackberries and strawberry.
Now take a sip of the coffee and swirl it round in your mouth. Slurp some oxygen inside and focus on the flavours. The berry notes have become slightly jammy and are carried by sugared tea and vanilla. In the background you will get a rosehip jammy flavour as well. Your mouth will respond to the tannins in the coffee, they remind me of grapefruit and blood orange. the tannins are subtle, soft and add to a beautiful mouthfeel of this Kenya. Also pay attention to the lemony acidity and the juicy aspect of this coffee. The juicy aspect is what makes your mouth water with each sip. The enzymes in your saliva interacts with the flavour components of the coffee, making them sweeter with each sip.
Let the coffee cool down a bit to discover more flavours. When the coffee has cooled down a little more, you will find that the vanilla flavour pops up more, dispersing the berries to the background. Also a cedar and black pepper kernel note can be found in the upper aft portion of your mouth. These notes a short and the black pepper kernel is more of a peppery sensation instead of the flavour itself. The last note that pops up is that of black tea, and that note will linger during the aftertaste. The aftertaste has notes of cocoa, caramel, chocolate and the fruity berry notes.
Fazenda Specialty Coffee – Kenya: The verdict.
The Kenya Oldonyo Sapuk by Fazenda Specialty Coffee is a great coffee to drink all day long. The fruity flavours cover a wide range of berries such as red currant, strawberry and black currant. But there is more to be found: rose hip jam for example and what about the tannins of grapefruit and blood orange. It’s notes like these that create a full experience that we all love so much in Kenyan coffee. The aftertaste is nice as well as the acidity that isn’t so high as to give you that full feeling in your stomach. The recipe given to me by Fazenda was great to try out and I recommend you as a reader to try it as well!