Washed Coffee Beans Processing: Introduction to Kenyan Washed Coffee Bean Regions and Flavor Profiles

FrontStreet Coffee Kenya Thima Girl Washed Coffee Flavor Profile

Washed coffee focuses solely on the flavor of the coffee beans themselves. This method aims to let you taste the flavors within the coffee beans, rather than the flavors attached to the bean surface.

Natural or honey-processed coffees require flavorful coffee cherries. Washed coffee flavors, by contrast, depend almost 100% on the natural sugars and nutrients that coffee beans absorb during their growth cycle. That means variety, soil, weather, maturity, fermentation, washing methods and drying processes are absolutely critical.

Washed coffee reflects both perfect cultivation science and the fact that coffee farmers are an indispensable part of creating coffee bean flavor. When we approach washed coffee, it is clear that origin and environmental conditions play a crucial role in adding flavor.

This means the washing process can highlight the true characteristics of single-origin coffee beans just as much as other processes, which is why so many specialty coffees are washed.

"Washed Ethiopian and Kenyan coffees have extremely clear flavors, and if processed correctly, their excellent flavors will be perfectly presented."

Kenya Thima Girl

Kenya Thima Girl comes from a micro-region called Karatina in Nyeri. The Ndima-ini Factory is part of the Gakuyu Farmers' Cooperative Society, which separated from the large Mathera Cooperative Society in 1996 to become independent. The Gakuyu Cooperative has only two factories, Ndima-ini and Kirigu, with 1,800 employees. The Kirigu factory is named after the Kirigu River, which supplies water for processing coffee cherries near the factory.

For the past 20 years, approximately 850 small-scale farmers have delivered ripe coffee cherries to the Ndima-ini Factory for processing by factory manager John Kamau. Unlike traditional Kenyan washed coffees that undergo 72 hours of fermentation, this Kenya Thima Girl coffee is soaked and fermented for 80 hours after pulping, then naturally dried on raised drying beds.

Flavor notes: Dark plum, berries, cherry tomatoes, plum, cream.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The point of washed coffee is clarity, and that is why FrontStreet keeps washing at the center of its Ethiopian lineup. FrontStreet Coffee Washed Yirgacheffe is the archetypal example: the classic everyday washed Yirgacheffe that many drinkers meet first, known for white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity and a tea-like body, and priced so that it can be a daily coffee. Yirgacheffe is a small town in the Sidama zone of southern Ethiopia at roughly 1700-2100 meters, with the trees planted above 1800 meters, and its white florals and lemon-citrus acidity are so recognizable that the name now stands for a whole style of washed Ethiopian coffee.

If you want to see what a truly traceable single washed lot can do, FrontStreet Coffee Gedingding Cooperative comes from the Gedeb area at the southeastern edge of Yirgacheffe: it began as part of the Woka cooperative under the YCFCU union, and was later separated out as a single-origin lot in the same spirit of traceability. It follows the most traditional washed processing, so it carries no bitter tonality, instead showing clear, bright citrus and lemon acidity and jasmine fragrance. The cooperative has roughly 300 member farmers.

Brew both the way the article suggests for washed coffee: keep the pour clean and the cup transparent, and the dark plum, berry and cream notes of a well-processed washed lot will come through without any of the surface flavors that natural processing adds.