Burundi Gaharo: Sample Coffee Roasters

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.

Sourcing and ingredients

100% Bourbon coffee beans, provided by Osito and roasted by us on Gadigal land / Sydney.

Country grade: AA (Burundi) ?

Packaging

Bag: ABA Certified home compostable
Label: Recyclable
Valve (on bags larger than 250g): General waste
Coffee ordered online is shipped in a recyclable cardboard box

Brewing this coffee

We recommend brewing this coffee 15–49 days post-roast. If pre-ground, brew as soon as possible. Our advice on storing coffee.

1:3
dose:yield
ratio

To brew on espresso, we recommend using 20g of beans (dose) to get 60g of espresso out (yield), during 24-28 seconds.

g dose

g yield

View the how to brew espresso (single origin) guide.

1:16.7
beans:water
ratio

To brew in infusion/fed brewers (V60, Chemex) use a ratio of 1:16.7 ratio of beans:water.

g beans

g water

View full recipes and videos in our brewguides

1:14.3
beans:water
ratio

To brew in immersion brewers (plunger, AeroPress, Kalita, batch brewer) we recommend using a 1:14.3 ratio of beans:water

g beans

g water

View full recipes and videos in our brewguides

1:12
beans:water
ratio

To brew as cold brew we recommend using a 1:12 ratio of beans:water

g beans

g water

View full recipes and videos in our brewguides

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

Varietals

Bourbon varietal

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.