Burundi Coffee Beans Flavor Profile Growing Information Characteristics Regional Distribution

Burundi: Geography at a Glance

Burundi lies in the southeastern part of central Africa, south of the equator. Rwanda borders it to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, while Lake Tanganyika runs along its southwestern edge. The country is made up mostly of plateaus and mountains, formed largely by the eastern plateau of the East African Rift Valley, with an average elevation of 1,600 meters nationwide, which is why it is nicknamed the "Mountain Country." More than half its territory drains toward Lake Tanganyika. The capital is Bujumbura. The western lake shores, the river valleys and the eastern districts have a tropical savanna climate, while the center and west have a tropical mountain climate. Annual average temperature runs from 20-24°C and can reach 33°C. March to May is the heavy rainy season, October to December the light rainy season, and the remaining months are dry.

Coffee Characteristics and Processing

Burundi coffee bears a striking resemblance to that of its neighbor Rwanda, and the two are often confused with one another. Burundi's coffee is overwhelmingly Bourbon, processed from whole cherries using traditional wet methods. The signature of its specialty lots is an elegant sweetness paired with bright citrus aromatics. This batch is a Bourbon variety micro-lot.

Variety: Bourbon

Processing Station: Panga Processing Station

Flavor: Grape skin, orange wine, fermented fruit

This lot is a natural-processed Bourbon micro-lot, grown on Mardati Peak at the Panga processing station in the Kabuye area of Kayanza Province. Altitude here is extremely high, with the mountains rising above 2,000 meters in places. The soil is fertile and gravelly, well suited to coffee, and the station is widely regarded as the best in Burundi.

An Overview of the Burundi Coffee Industry

Burundi has one of the world's most varied and successful coffee industries, with a character all its own. Coffee was introduced by Belgian colonists in 1930 and is now grown exclusively on small farms. Unfortunately, many of those farms sit in areas bordering war-torn Rwanda, which puts constant pressure on production. Almost all Burundian coffee is Arabica, and the trees in Ngozi are planted above 1,200 meters. The cup is aromatic and rich with excellent acidity, and most of the crop is exported to the United States, Germany, Finland and Japan.

Flavor Profile and Tasting Notes

Flavor Description: Rich aromas of raisin, blackberry jam and ripe peach. The first sips bring sweet cranberry, citrus and peach juice, while caramel and orange jam sweetness fill the whole cup. The wine-like fermented character typical of natural processing is prominent too, echoing orange wine or peach, which makes this a genuinely distinctive Burundian specialty coffee.

The Bourbon Variety

Bourbon coffee (French: Cafe Bourbon) is produced from the Arabica cultivar of the same name. It was first cultivated on Reunion, which was known as Bourbon Island before 1789. France later used the island as a link between the African continent and Latin America, and today Bourbon is one of the two most widely planted Arabica lines in the world. It is typically grown at altitudes of 3,500 to 6,500 feet (1,062-1,972 meters).

Manufacturer: FrontStreet Coffee
Shelf Life: 90 days
Net Weight: 227g
Packaging: Bulk coffee beans
Roast Level: Roasted coffee beans
Origin: Burundi
Roast Degree: Medium roast

Product Details

Burundi Kayanza Kabuye Natural

Country: Burundi

Altitude: 1,750 meters

Region: Kayanza Kabuye

Roast Level: Medium roast

Processing Method: Natural

Brewing Instructions

Pour-over Burundi: 15g of coffee, medium grind (small Fuji ghost tooth grinder at setting #4), V60 dripper, water temperature 88-89°C. First pour 30g of water and bloom for 27 seconds. Continue pouring to 105g, wait until the water level in the bed drops to halfway, then continue slowly until the total reaches 225g. Stop before the tail end of the brew. Water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, extraction time 2:00.

Why Natural-Processed Reds Taste Like This

Burundi's high altitude and long dry spells make it an unusually good place to dry whole cherries. Between the harvest and the drying beds, the fruit skin and mucilage stay in contact with the seed for weeks, and the sugars and aromatics in that fruit migrate inward. This is what puts grape skin, orange wine and stewed fruit into the cup, and it is also why natural lots from Burundi and Rwanda can taste so much sweeter than their washed counterparts. The trade-off is that natural processing leaves little room for error: uneven turning, rain, or a slow start to drying will show up immediately as a muted or muddy flavor, which is why high-altitude stations such as Panga take such care with the beds and with turning the fruit.

What the Cup Tells You About the Variety

Bourbon contributes the structure underneath all that fruit. Its beans are slightly smaller and denser than Typica's, and the variety tends to ripen with a concentrated sweetness that survives a medium roast without turning sharp. In the case of a natural micro-lot such as this one, the combination produces a brew that is at once jammy and clean, drinking best at 88-89°C so that the fermented notes stay lifted rather than turning heavy. If the cup starts tasting syrupy rather than juicy, dropping the temperature by a degree usually restores the citrus edge.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The wine-like fruit in this Burundi micro-lot belongs to a whole family of coffees that front-load sweetness and fermented aroma, and if that is what you enjoy, FrontStreet Coffee roasts several that explore the same ground. FrontStreet Coffee Yirgacheffe Natural Red Cherry is the most direct comparison. Only fully ripe red cherries are selected, then spread on raised beds to dry over 27 to 30 days, and the result, roasted medium-light, keeps the elegant florals and bright acidity of the region while adding a pronounced tropical fruit note, a full fermented character and plenty of sweetness. FrontStreet Coffee Guifei, from Sidamo in Ethiopia, pushes in a similar direction, with a light fermented aroma, florals, citrus and mango on a thick body, held together by honey sweetness, cocoa and a hint of spice.

Not every natural lot needs to be a fruit bomb. FrontStreet Coffee 2013 Yunnan Typica is grown on our own estate and dried on raised beds, where the natural method amplifies the nutty base and balances sweetness against acidity more evenly than a washed coffee would, adding berry-like acidity over apricot, brown sugar and a light tea note. FrontStreet Coffee Brazil Queen Estate takes a different route again, drying the cherries on racks with regular turning before a short mechanical finish, which stabilizes the beans and keeps them fresh longer; in the cup it shows fresh sugarcane, black tea, a soft fruit sweetness, nuttiness, balanced gentle acidity, very little bitterness and a smooth, bright chocolate finish. If you want to go further toward fermentation, FrontStreet Coffee's Colombian double anaerobic natural is the place to look: the whole cherries are sealed in tanks under carbon dioxide before drying, which slows the breakdown of sugars and deepens both sweetness and texture, yielding passion fruit, apricot, preserved fruit, grape and an almond-like finish.