Description
Farm Notes
This coffee is from the Ichamama Factory, a washing station near Karima Hill in Nyeri. The station was named after the Ichamama river which flows near enough to the station to be the source of water for processing coffee. Ichamama is one of 19 washing stations that make up the Othaya Farmer’s Cooperative Society, a coop-run organization. Othaya started in the mid-1950s, ballooning from 250 original members to 15,000 strong today. Karima is one of the older of the group, erected in 1964, and currently with nearly 1,000 farmer members (and is one of the most productive of the 19). The station sits at about 1750 meters above sea level, and coffee is grown in the higher altitude areas surrounding it. This is the Peaberry outturn, a separation of all of the small round beans from the flat beans (traded as grades AA, AB, C, and others). We find that the Peaberries can be a bit more fruit-forward than the AA and AB grades, even when they’re all from the same process batch.
Cupping Notes
Ichamama peaberry has a complex flavor compound, offering juicy and jammy fruit characteristics, intense raw sugar, and brightness. There are elements of orange juice in the dry ground coffee, pulpy and sweet, and a spiced fruit punch note. The wet aroma has a high level of fruit and brown sugar smells, like pie filling, juicy as well. Ichamama is a punchy cup in terms of acidity at a wide roast range. You can expect a lively citric vibrance to endure all the way up to Espresso roast level. Drip/Press roasts are a real treat, fruited flavors like blood orange, cranberry juice, tart lemon and red berry accents culminate in a delicious fruited mix. There’s a lot to take in with Ichamama, a brew that any coffee drinker can run up a lengthy list of adjectives to describe. It’s a bodied, sweet cup, so full of fruited flavor notes that are much more than ‘accents’. Espresso roasts display bittersweet chocolate roast tones along with flavor aspects of mulled grape juice, but muting down the acidty. All-in-all a delicious and complex pour-over brew using the Drip roasts.