Drew Moody

Kiamabara factory is one of five secondary processing units that form the larger Mugaga FCS Society based out of Karatina town, right in the heart of the quality Nyeri coffee growing area. As is common throughout Kenya, most producers in the co-operative own a few hundred coffee trees and they deliver ripe red cherry from these trees into a central co-operative washing station, like Ndima-ini, for further processing. The aroma of the Kenya Kiamabara is absolutely beautiful, and it erupts out of the cup like a volcano. Absolutely gorgeous and elegant flavors of red wine, tangerine, apple, pear, red grape, blackberry preserves, pomegranate, passion fruit, and cherry flood the taste buds, but the coffee still retains just a hint of its fruity/vegetal/sugary complexity with a beautiful strawberry rhubarb pie flavor.

Since 2008, much (if not most) of Ethiopia’s coffee goes anonymously through the privately owned, government-warehoused Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). Aside from cooperatives and large estates, coffees are sold through the ECX to exporters and in the processes rebranded by region. This lot was marked “Gelana Abaya”, which used to be a district of the Oromia region in the southern zone of Borena; now, Gelana and Abaya are separate districts, but coffee from either of the two can still be marked as “Gelana Abaya. The ECX does promise, at least, that the farmer gets paid 80% of the final export price, which means (s)he probably got paid well for it.