Burundi
Gaharo

One of the few natural coffees in our lineup! This Bourbon varietal has remarkable clarity of flavour and high fruitiness, brought by the natural fermentation. We’re finding notes of grape, lychee, and purple Hubba Bubba.

Natural process Bourbon

Flavour: purple Hubba Bubba, grape, lychee

Body: Acidity:

Roast: omni (filter + espresso)

Gaharo Hill is home to numerous coffee producers and a surprising amount of blacksmiths. On this hill, Long Miles Coffee (a Burundi-based producing company and partner of Osito—the importer of this coffee) built their very first washing station, which they called Bukeye Washing Station.

This lot comes from here, and guess what? It’s a natural process! It is a rare sight within our ocean of washed process origins, but so good and balanced that it caught our full attention. And now we want to share it with you all.

The crop nursery on Bukeye Washing Station

Natural Processing

Coffee cherries are floated and hand-sorted, taking only the ripest straight to drying tables. Here, this lot has spent 34 days drying slowly under the sun, slowly turning from deep red to a prune-like purple-black colour. At the end, the fruits have reached a 10.5% moisture level.

The entire coffee cherry spends between twenty-five to thirty days drying in its skin, slowly turning from deep red to a prune-like purple-black colour when fully dry, reaching a 10.5% moisture level—this one has dried for 34 days.

Drying beds used for processing on Bukeye Washing Station

Drying beds used on Bukeye Washing Station

The Scouts

Emery, Suavis, and Peter are Long Miles’ ‘Coffee Scouts’ working alongside coffee farming families on Gaharo Hill. Together, they support farmers by sharing sustainable farming practices, helping them plant shade trees and green manures, mulch their land, and seasonally prune their coffee trees.

During harvest, the ‘Coffee Scouts’ guide them through the cherry-picking process, helping them spot and catch antestia bugs—the colourful tree pest thought to be linked to the potato taste defect.

Learn everything about this coffee:

Ethical, traceable sourcing

This page has all the sourcing information (variety, process, region, story, importer, and more) that our importers share with us, and give us permission to use.

The transparency helps us talk confidently about the quality and background of our product, and it helps you know exactly what you’re buying.

Learn more:
Coffee page transparency legend
Our coffee philosophy
Our business approach

Fresh harvest coffee

We only source and roast coffee from each country’s latest harvest season (so the green coffee is never older than 1 year from the time of picking, processing and packing). This ensures the sensory qualities are always at their peak and unaffected by excessive ageing.

Roasted for espresso and filter (best enjoyed black)

Roast style: omni. Omni roasts are designed to brew and taste great both as espresso and filter. Our omni single origins generally sit on Agtron values in the ~70-60 value range. So, technically, they are somewhere in the lighter side of the medium spectrum.

Designed for espresso and filter brewing. Best enjoyed black.

Learn more:
Our Loring Kestrel S35 roaster
Our roasting style and approach

Best brewed within days 15-49 post-roast

The ‘fresh is best’ saying doesn’t apply to coffee (contrary to popular belief). Waiting before opening and brewing your bag of whole coffee beans helps develop peak flavour and acidity.

But heads up: if you buy pre-ground coffee, brew it as soon as possible.

Learn more:
Our recommended brewing window

Try our custom brewing recipes

Our recipes and ratios are tailored to our coffee sourcing and roasting styles, bringing the best flavour and feel out of each coffee.

For pour over, immersion, and other filter brewing styles, check our brew guides.
For our espresso single origins, we recommend a coffee:yield ratio of 1:3:

Dose: 20g ground coffee
Yield: 60g espresso
Total brew time: ~24-28 seconds

This is just a starting point! We encourage you to experiment, taste, and adjust to find the recipe that you enjoy the most.

Learn more:
Our espresso brew guide (single origin)
Brewing ratio calculator

Packaging and sustainability

Bags: ABA-certified home compostable (AS 5810-2010)
Labels: recyclable
Valves (only on +250g bags): general waste
Box and tape (online orders): recyclable

Learn more:
Our packaging

Producer: ~320 Producers
Farm/Coop: Bukeye Washing Station
Country: Burundi
Region: Muramvya Province
Altitude: 1700-2100m above sea level
Variety: Bourbon
Process: natural
Harvested: July 2023
Country grade: AA (Burundi)
Importer: Osito
Body
Acidity
Tasting notes: Purple hubba bubba, grape, lychee
Roast style: Omni (filter + espresso)

Variety

Bourbon variety

A natural mutation of the Typica varietal, Bourbon is named after Reunion Island (then known as Il Bourbon) where the French cultivated the Typica plants which naturally mutated.

The location

Coffee from Burundi

Coffee first arrived in Burundi in the 1920s while the country was still under Belgian colonial rule. Since the civil war in 1993 Burundi has placed a great importance on growing the coffee industry and the flow on effects that will have on the country’s economy.

Farm processes

Natural process

This technique leaves some flesh on the coffee cherry during processing and drying. This results in flavours which may show jammy fruit and a little winey-ness.