An Introduction to African Premium Coffee - Kenya Premium Coffee Beans Kenya Coffee Overview Kenya

FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya coffee is grown predominantly at elevations from 1,500 to 2,100 meters, with two harvests a year. Its distinctive trait is vibrant fruit aromatics, most commonly citrus notes. FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya coffee offers multi-layered flavor complexity with juice-like acidity, wonderful grapefruit and wine notes, a moderate body, and stands as a favorite single origin among coffee professionals. Kenya coffee gained further prominence through the success of the Hollywood film "Out of Africa."

Flavor Profile

FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya AA has round, thick-fleshed beans with excellent heat conductivity and high refinement precision. French roasted, it delivers rich, sweet flavors with remarkable body, superior expansion, and exceptional aroma and sweetness.

Introduction

Coffee professionals universally regard Kenya coffee as one of their most cherished varieties, because it embodies everything we seek from an exceptional cup. FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya coffee has magnificent, satisfying aromatics, balanced and delightful acidity, uniform particle size, and excellent fruit character. Its flavor profile is remarkably distinctive, with few comparable alternatives. The signature trait is vibrant fruit aromatics: try to find these flavors in the cup and notice how they manifest on the palate. Among them, citrus notes are the most common. Kenya coffee offers multi-layered complexity with juice-like acidity, wonderful grapefruit and wine notes, and a moderate body. Kenya coffee gained further prominence through the success of the Hollywood film "Out of Africa."

Current Status

The Kenyan government takes the coffee industry extremely seriously, and cutting or destroying coffee trees is illegal. Kenya's coffee buyers are world-class premium purchasers, and no other country consistently cultivates, produces, and markets coffee the way Kenya does. All coffee beans are first acquired by the Coffee Board of Kenya (CBK), where they are evaluated and graded before being sold at weekly auctions, no longer sorted by grade. The Coffee Board of Kenya acts only as an agent, collecting coffee samples and distributing them to buyers to facilitate price and quality assessment. Nairobi auctions are held for private exporters, with the Coffee Board of Kenya paying growers prices below market value. The highest coffee grade is Peaberry (PB), followed by AA++, AA+, AA, AB, and so on. Premium coffee shows bright luster, delicious flavor, and subtle wine notes. Auctions are also organized to meet blender demand. These auctions typically feature smaller volumes (3-6 tons per lot), with samples bearing grower markings for buyer evaluation. After the auctions, exporters package coffee according to different flavor profiles, quality levels, and blender-required quantities, giving blenders maximum flexibility. Quality-conscious Germans and Scandinavians are long-term purchasers of Kenya coffee.

On an international scale, Kenya's coffee growth is evident: exports reached 800,000 bags in 1969-1970 and rose to 2 million bags by 1985-1986. Current production stabilizes at 1.6 million bags, with average yields of approximately 650 kilograms per hectare. Even before recent coffee price surges, Kenya coffee's average price had been consistently rising. Prices in 1993-1994 increased by 50% over twelve months prior. The increases result primarily from growing demand.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If you prefer a balanced, medium-roast cup to pair with Kenyan coffee on the shelf, FrontStreet Coffee recommends the Brazil Queen Estate. It comes from Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer, and is a distinctive local Yellow Bourbon variety. Medium roasted, it shows a clean, gently sweet profile with the aromas and sweetness of cream, peanut, chocolate, toast, and sugarcane, and it works for pour-over, a moka pot, or an espresso machine.

For a more classic balance, FrontStreet Coffee's Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 is grown from the Typica variety, one of the world's finest Arabicas, and its exceptional geography is essential to Blue Mountain's balanced flavor. FrontStreet Coffee roasts it medium to bring the distinctive acidity, bitterness, sweetness, and body into harmony, producing an elegant, inviting cup with chocolate, roasted nuts, cream, and caramel right from the first sip.