Kenyan Coffee Grade Classification How to Drink Kenyan Coffee? Characteristics of Kenyan AA Coffee

The Journey of Coffee

Coffee's journey from a mountain crop to the drink in our hands can be divided broadly into five major steps: planting, harvesting, processing, roasting, and extraction. Nearly every classification we see today is based on the different factors and methods at work in those steps.

Kenyan Coffee: A Model Producer

Kenya is a model country for producing excellent coffee. Coffee was introduced from Britain in 1900, and varieties were limited to traditional Arabica until 1950, when the SL28 and SL34 Bourbon varieties — now Kenya's finest — arrived. All Kenyan coffee is processed with the washed method and graded using the AA PLUS, AA, AB system, which differentiates only bean-size uniformity and does not represent quality differences. Premium altitudes range from 4,200 to 6,800 feet. In 2009-2010, global warming and disease cut production and pushed prices up. Since then, the continued rise of specialty coffee and Kenya's irreplaceable blackberry flavor have kept premium Kenyan beans expensive. Kenyan beans are relatively large, with high wine-like blackberry acidity. Harvest can come twice a year, with April-June the secondary season and October-December the main harvest.

Kenya's Coffee Auction System

Most beans are graded and inspected by the Kenya Coffee Board and then sold at auction. The public auction system dates back before 1934. It works through an agent system: Kenya has 50 licensed agents who send sample beans to their clients for cupping, and clients bid on their favorite coffees through agents at the auction. That approach, however, seemed to let middle agents erode farmers' income. So in 2006 Kenya opened up 32 independent sales agents who could deal directly with foreign coffee buyers without going through auctions — though all coffee must still meet the Kenya Coffee Board's standards for quality, storage, and bank guarantees to be sold. The two systems run in parallel, and after years of development this has become one of the most transparent auction distribution systems anywhere. Better coffee fetches better prices through cupping, encouraging more cooperatives and farms to take part. Even so, the second route allows direct contact with farmers for first-hand information.

Kenyan Coffee Grade Classification

E (Elephant)

E stands for "Elephant," and it is not the Elephant bean variety. Normally a coffee fruit contains two seeds growing face to face, each with one flat side — these are flat beans, mother beans, or twin beans. E occurs when two seeds fuse during growth into an oversized bean. They are rare, arising as natural mutations.

AA

The sieve hole size is approximately 7.20 millimeters, and this grade commands a better price.

AB

A's screen size is 6.80 millimeters, while B's is 6.20 millimeters; the two are mixed and sold together, hence AB. Most beans from a single harvest fall into this grade.

PB (Peaberry)

Called Peaberry in English, and mostly small round beans, male beans, or single-lobed beans in Taiwan, relative to ordinary flat beans. They are very rare, since only one seed develops fully inside the fruit, producing a small, round bean. Opinions differ on how this affects flavor, but some people particularly like them, so PB beans are sorted out and sold on their own.

C

Screen size between 4.8-5.6 millimeters, considered small-sized beans.

TT

Usually defective beans fall into this grade.

T

At this grade, usually only fragments, defective beans, and small beans below 4.8 millimeters remain.

MH/ML

Overripe beans that fell on the ground, and other very poor-quality beans, are not exported.

Additional Grade Classifications

The commonly seen AA+, AA++, AA Top, and AB+ are classifications made by traders themselves, not part of Kenya's official system. Different traders define them differently, so they are for reference only.

FrontStreet Coffee's Kenyan AA Selection

FrontStreet Coffee also carries Kenyan AA beans, including Kenya Asali and Karogoto, both Kenyan AA. The recommended pour-over parameters are a water temperature of 90-92°C, a coffee-to-water ratio of 1:15, and a brew time of 2 minutes 20 seconds. The cup offers bright cherry tomato acidity and honey-like sweetness.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Washing is the classic water-based way to process coffee fruit, running through flotation, depulping, a soak-and-ferment stage to break down the mucilage, washing or further soaking, and finally drying and hulling. Spending a long time in water triggers chemical changes inside the beans and consumes much of the monosaccharides — fructose and glucose — so sugar content drops while organic acids rise. Washed coffee therefore keeps more of the bean's own aroma, paired with bright fruit acidity and a clean, fresh profile.

FrontStreet's Yirgacheffe Gudin Ding Cooperative is a good illustration: smallholder volumes are low, so cherries go to a cooperative for centralized processing, and Gudin Ding is a skillful team from Gudin Ding village known for an especially refined, clean cup. Its washed process brings out jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity, and a medium-light roast layers in green tea and honey tones, working well as pour-over, cold brew, or espresso. The best-known expression of the method, though, may be FrontStreet's Kenya Cherry Tomato, since Kenya is expert at double-washing green beans: the washing step is repeated through cycles of flotation, soaking, and rinsing to clear the mucilage before drying and hulling. All that rinsing maximizes the juicy quality, giving rich aromas of cherry tomato, smoked plum, snow pear, black plum, and brown sugar — sweet, tart, and juicy, and a favorite of many coffee drinkers.

FrontStreet's Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 shows why washing has lasted. Jamaica's island climate offers shorter sunshine hours than many origins and a constant risk of beans deteriorating, and washing was the solution: unlike natural processing, it removes the skin, pulp, and mucilage before drying, cutting the moisture held around the bean and shortening drying time to produce translucent beans with a low defect rate. That is what gives Blue Mountain its rich aroma in the cup — hazelnut, cream, chocolate, and caramel — with a balanced body in which no single flavor stands out or goes missing.