Yandaro Kayanza - Burundi

About this coffee

The Yandaro washing station is located near the Rwandan border, in Kayanza province. Both countries share unique growing conditions in the corridor connecting southern Rwanda with northern Burundi. This region produces many of our favorite coffees in both Rwanda and Burundi.

The washing station is located in the valley through which the Yandaro River runs, giving it its name. The growing area around the station benefits from its proximity to the Kibira Rainforest. A rainforest helps maintain groundwater reserves and adequate nutrient levels in the soil of the surrounding region. Located near the rainforest and a major river, the Yandaro station is strategically located within a region with high coffee-growing potential.

The station serves 2,341 local coffee producers from 22 hills surrounding the station. The average altitude in the area is 1,800 meters above sea level. Yandaro processes more than 1,200 metric tons of coffee throughout the harvest season. The region has a temperate climate with average temperatures between 18 and 25° Celsius, depending on the altitude.

The washing station participates in several support and outreach projects for farmers, including livestock breeding projects and a series of Farmer Hub projects focused on strengthening cooperatives and improving yields.

Variety and cultivation

Many trees in Burundi are of the Red Bourbon variety. Due to the increasingly small size of coffee plantations, root aging is a major problem in Burundi. Many farmers have trees over 50 years old, but because plots are small, it is difficult to justify removing the trees completely from production for the three or four years it will take for new plantations to begin producing. To encourage farmers to renew their plantations, Greenco purchases seeds from the Institute of Agronomic Sciences of Burundi (ISABU), establishes nurseries, and sells the seedlings to farmers at or below cost price. At the washing station, farmers can also obtain organic fertilizer made from composted pulp.

Despite the ubiquity of coffee cultivation in Burundi, each smallholder has a relatively small harvest. The average farmer has approximately 250 trees, usually in their backyards. Each tree produces an average of 1.5 kilos of cherries, so the average producer sells between 200 and 300 kilos of cherries annually.

Harvesting and processing

During the harvest season, all coffee is selectively hand-picked. Since most families have only a few hundred trees, the harvest is almost entirely done by the family.

Quality assurance begins as soon as the growers deliver their cherries. The cherries are wet-processed under constant supervision. All cherries are floated in small buckets as a first step to check quality. After floating, the highest-quality cherries are hand-sorted again to remove damaged, unripe, and overripe cherries.

Once sorted, the cherries are pulped within 6 hours of delivery. The station's pulper can process up to 3 tons of cherries per hour. During pulping, the cherries are separated into high and low grades by density in a 3-disc Mackinon pulper, equipped with an additional separation disc. The coffee is then fermented for 10 to 12 hours in clean water from a nearby stream. After fermentation, the coffee passes through washing and grading channels to remove any remaining mucilage and separate the beans by density.

The parchment is transported to the drying tables, where it dries slowly for 2 to 3 weeks. Harvesters inspect the dried beans for any damaged or defective beans that may have escaped previous quality inspections. Each table has a traceability label with batch information. The drying parchment is turned regularly, and any visually defective parchment is removed.

Recipe for home

We recommend preparing it in a filter, where its fruity and sweet notes of dried apricots, honey, and raspberries are enhanced.

V60:

15 grams of ground coffee for V60,

260 gr total of water at 92º,

We first pour 50g of water in 30 seconds. Then we pour more water until we reach a total of 260g in 1 minute.

Total extraction time: 2:30.

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