Coffee African Origin Regional Characteristics | Kenya AA Grade Flavor Profile Introduction

FrontStreet Coffee - African Coffee Origins: Kenya's Coffee Regions

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Kenya is a model country for producing excellent coffee. The high-altitude washed Arabicas it grows rank among the finest beans in the world and are a favorite of acid-loving connoisseurs. Coffee first arrived in Kenya in 1900, brought by the British from Ethiopia. Today it is the single largest component of the agricultural economy, accounting for about 50% of the whole, and 80% of the country's people work in coffee-related industries. Since 1963, most Kenyan coffee has been graded and inspected by the Kenya Coffee Board before being sold at auction.

Kenya AA denotes beans sized between 17 and 18 mesh. AB denotes 15 to 16 mesh, with up to 10% allowed below 15 mesh, though grade has no direct bearing on actual quality. The Kenya Coffee Board is strict about research, development, and quality management. Its strong auction system lifts bean prices, which indirectly helps hardworking farmers, while agricultural education keeps growers' techniques current so they can produce better coffee. High-quality Kenyan coffee with its distinctive, powerful blackberry acidity is scarce, and those beans come from excellent estates that green coffee buyers compete to bid for and acquire.

Coffee beans usually form as two flattened halves, commonly called female beans. Peaberries, or PB, develop instead as a single rice-shaped or oval bean, commonly called the male bean. Kenyan peaberries are a hand-selected variant of Kenyan beans and, among peaberries generally, they have the most distinctive character, the most individual style and variation, and the widest roasting range. They are also the peaberries most drinkers know.

Thika Region - The Asali Cooperative's AA Top grade comes from the foothills of Kenya's Aberdare Mountains, close to the Thika region and the Great Rift Valley that links Kenya to Ethiopia in the east. It is produced by a cooperative called The Asali Cooperative, owned and made up of 155 smallholder families, with an annual output of 1,200 bags of green coffee. The coffee comes from green beans cultivated by nearby smallholders, who average about 250 coffee trees each, and the harvested red cherries are delivered to the washing plant for processing. The signature of coffee from here is its black currant fruit aroma. Flavor description: grapefruit fragrance, mulberry, caramel, a sweet-and-sour preserved-fruit quality, full and juicy, crisp and sweet.

Common varieties today include Bourbon, Kents (SL34, SL28), Typica, and Ruiru 11. About 90% of current plantings are SL34 and SL28, while the newer Batian variety, released in 2007, has yet to be widely planted. The vast majority of Kenyan coffee is organically grown even without certification, because improved cultivation practices mean chemical pesticides and herbicides are rarely used. All high-grade Kenyan coffee is washed processed. Naturally sun-dried, unwashed beans, known as M'buni, are low-grade lots kept only for local consumption.

In short: FrontStreet Coffee is a specialty coffee research workshop, happy to share coffee knowledge with everyone. We share without reservation for one reason—to let more friends fall in love with coffee. There are also three low-discount coffee promotions every month, because FrontStreet Coffee wants more people to drink the best coffee at the lowest price. That has been FrontStreet Coffee's mission for the past six years.

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Kenya and Ethiopia sit at the top of the African coffee ladder, and tasting them side by side is the fastest way to understand what the continent does best. FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe is the natural starting point: clear jasmine fragrance with bright citrus acidity, the combination that made Yirgacheffe a byword for Ethiopian specialty coffee. The town lies in southern Ethiopia's Sidama zone at about 1,700–2,100 meters, with coffee planted above 1,800 meters, and its cool, misty, humid climate is what produces that interwoven floral and fruit character—light, elegant, tea-like, and as refreshing as clean lemon tea.

For a single-village contrast, FrontStreet Coffee's Gidding Cooperative coffee comes from the Worka area at the southeastern edge of Yirgacheffe. It was originally part of the YCFCU-affiliated Worka cooperative, and in 2012 the roughly 300-member community became its own cooperative. Because the pulp is removed before drying, the coffee's inherent aromatics come through clearly: citrus and lemon with elegant white florals, bright and fine overall. FrontStreet Coffee's Sun-Dried Huakui, from Hambella in Sidamo's Guji zone, takes a 200-hectare farm's traditional natural process and dries the ripe cherries on raised beds for 21 days, turning them constantly and removing defects every three to five days. Roasted medium-light, it shows a light fermented wine note, florals, citrus, and mango, with honey sweetness, a cocoa accent, spice, a thick body, and a long finish.

Two more Ethiopian coffees round out the picture. FrontStreet Coffee's Sidamo Sun-Dried Hamasho comes from a processing plant whose quality and distinctive flavor have made it a fixture on Ethiopian green coffee competition lists; its 74158 beans, from a JARC-released disease-resistant line, are small with prominent florals and fruit—perfumed lemon, strawberry, and starfruit on the nose, then clear strawberry, starfruit, and green grape sweetness, with florals emerging behind them. FrontStreet Coffee's Kaffa Forest, finally, represents the wild side of Ethiopia: the trees grow between 1,400 and 2,100 meters under shade in a pristine microclimate with red soil and ample rainfall. Roasted medium-light, it shows clear white florals, bright lemon acidity, sweet orange and bergamot, a faint melon and nut sweetness in the finish, and a green-tea-like body.