Coffee

This is our signature coffee blend which kick started our business. Named after the Soho foundry owned by the MacAdam brothers where our roastery is located. This area was the industrial heartland of the emerging city of Belfast in the early 1800’s. McAdam’s Soho Foundry emerged in the 1820’s at the period when there was a large development in the engineering of iron and brass foundering industries in Belfast.We wanted Foundry to provide all the things we love in coffee, a blend that covers a lot of bases. It is made up of coffees from Brazil, Honduras and Papua New Guinea, which are either certified or transparently traded coffees. This coffee is full bodied, full of fruity sweetness with syrupy redcurrant and sloe berry notes. A crisp taste of buttered toast, with the flavour of brioche with almonds and honey coming through in the finish.

Flavours of hazelnut, caramel and honey. We are thrilled for our Brazil SanCoffee to have been shortlisted as finalists for the IQFA Awards in Ireland in July 2023. We had the pleasure of being nominated alongside other great businesses and are so proud that our very own coffee made the finals for Best Hot Beverages 2023. This fully traceable, transparently traded coffee comes from the San Antonio estate in the South of Minas Gerais. SanCoffee is a cooperative made up of 20 fazendas or estates. SanCoffee have a centralised lab, warehouse and dry mill, as well as a dedicated team of Q Graders who manage the quality for all the member estates. Working as a group through the central lab enables estates to share and gain from the collective’s many years of combined experience. More so, having total control of their warehouse and dry mill enables complete traceability and precise milling specifications for customers.  SanCoffee as a collaborative export partnership have managed to mitigate the influence of a dangerously low market price. And in most cases, premiums to growers are 30-50% higher than both the local and C price market rates. SanCoffee and its members continue to mobilise and collaborate to strengthen the ability for its members to sell at above local market rates, in turn championing economic sustainability.        This 80+ points graded coffee is a real winner offering flavours of hazelnut, caramel and honey working as an excellent single origin coffee as well as contributing natural sweetness towards any blend. Carbon neutrality SanCoffee has long been committed to the sustainability of its activities, whether in terms of environmental preservation or social responsibility, aiming to improve living conditions in the surrounding communities and contribute to the future of generations to come.As coffee growers, we are deeply connected with nature but also involved with the most important economic activity in our region. Thus, we strongly believe we can collaborate more with the planet and our people.Climate change is undoubtedly one of the major issues we are facing, it poses a real threat to the future of coffee growing. Therefore, we see it as a natural evolution to start working on our carbon footprint. In 2020, for the first time, we have been able to offset 100% of greenhouse gases emissions corresponding to the year 2019, to become one of the first coffee coops to achieve Carbon Neutrality in Brazil.  

Notes Zesty caramel, chocolatey with a crisp apple acidity and lime. Aromas of cherry and fruit juice. Colombia is the second-largest producer of coffee in the world and the largest producer of washed and Arabica coffees.  Annually, Colombia exports approximately 12.5 million bags and consumes 2 million bags internally. Colombia only produces washed Arabica coffee. There are three primary varieties grown in Colombia, and the coffee is referred to by the region in which it is grown. "Excelso" is a grading term for exportable coffee from Colombia, not related to variety or cupping profile. EP (European Preparation) specifies that the raw beans are all hand sorted to remove any defective beans and foreign material. Excelso coffee beans are large, but slightly smaller than Supremo coffee beans. Excelso beans are a screen size of 15-16, versus Supremo beans, which are sized on screen 17. Colombian coffee is graded before shipment according to bean size. Supremo and Excelso coffee beans can be harvested from the same tree, but they are sorted by size. Excelso accounts for the greatest volume of coffee exported from Colombia. This coffee produces zesty caramel and chocolate with crisp apple acidity and lime, aromas of cherry and fruit juice.

This is our seasonal blend which we feel ticks all the boxes for a good espresso. This blend is predominantly a South American combination which provides flavours of chocolate, fruit and sweet molasses. Currently we are using a blend of Cerrado from Brazil and Cosecha Azul SHG from Honduras, both are grown at altitudes above 1100 metres above sea level.

The flavour profile is black cherry, caramel, raisin, toffee and vanilla with an SCA score of 84.75. Aquiares, one of Costa Rica’s most historic coffee farms, sits high on the slopes of the Turrialba Volcano. The largest coffee farm in Costa Rica, Aquiares devotes 80% of its land to growing high quality coffee and the remaining 20% to conservation. Coffee plots are interlaced with over a dozen natural springs and almost 20 kilometers in streams, all protected with buffer zones in line with our Rainforest Alliance certification. These streams form a network of natural corridors through the farm that connect the large protected forests in the two river valleys, providing a healthy environment for the local animals, birds, and plants. In 1890, Aquiares was founded by farmers looking to take advantage of Costa Rica´s railroad to the port of Limón. The farm built its own mill, focusing on the washed-coffee processes that are indicative of Costa Rican coffee. Soon, the quality of Aquiares' coffee won it loyal clients in Europe, the United States and Japan. In the early 1900's the English Lindo family acquired the farm. One of the first things they did (in 1925) was import an aluminum church from Belgium and specially order its stained glass windows from Italy. To this day, the church remains the heart of the Aquiares community.In 1949, the farm was bought by the Figueres family. This was the family of Pepe Figueres, the ex-president who abolished the Costa Rican Army. This famous family continued to develop and expand the farm until the early 1970s when three closely-knit families assumed ownership. First plant of F1 CA we planted was back in 2011, with no real understanding of what we where getting ourselves into. Turns out this hybrid derived from the cross of Rume Sudan & Sarchimor T5296 was gonna love the fertile soils of Aquiares, and produce one of the best profiles of our unique volcanic, Caribbean and shaded terroir.  Vigorous plants produce burgundy red cherries bearing a dense, and large bean. We pick these lots every 15 days and only bring in 5-10 bags per day. A team of select pickers, or "microloteros" have in these years perfected the skill of selection for optimal ripeness. 

This coffee will not only produce an excellent espresso, but also bring out floral and fresh herb notes when drunk as a filter coffee. The flavour profile is bright acidity of citrus, lime,  with a smooth silky body and a floral aroma. with an SCA score of 82. Background  Coffee production has distinguished itself in our region for many years. Before becoming a cooperative, many sold the coffee fruit to different buyers without any price regulation and many times without a fair payment for our work.In 2015, they began to organize as a group and with the support of some allies, we managed to legally establish ourselves on September 16, 2016.Driven by the pursuit to sell coffee at a fair price while simultaneously promoting the product’s quality, emphasizing its cultivation and artisan production. Located in the Tacaná Natural Reserve, are proud of the biodiversity and the cultural heritage that our product represents. This combination allows the co-operative to sustainably harness the natural resources of the place called home, resulting in rich-flavoured coffee whose quality can compete worldwide. For more than 20 years, the Tacaná volcano “House of fire” in the Mame language, was declared a Natural Reserve by the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (CONANP) of Mexico.The coffee communities that inhabit the house of fire are committed to the conservation of this iconic volcano of the Southern Border.The Tacaná is an active volcano 4070 meters above sea level, located on the border of Mexico and Guatemala. The cloud forest, the tropical pine-oak forests and the high moorlands give the Volcano an extraordinary scenic beauty. It is considered one of the most biodiverse areas in the country, in its forests there are 12 endangered species of birds, including the quetzal and other species such as the anteaters and the tigrillo. This bean has been grown on a small farm (La Soledad, which works within a community of small farmers striving to grow great coffees. The intense rains and rich volcanic soils of the area give the beans their particular body and pleasant acidity, producing the excellent quality characteristic of these high altitude coffees.  

Adado is a primary cooperative part of Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU). Unions such as YCFCU were created with government support to help primary co-operatives to market and sell coffee. As a service provider, is in their interest and part of their MO to represent each individual washing station. Coffees from a union won’t have a generic label. They will always be traceable up to the kebele level. In a market where coffees from different areas are sometimes blended to fulfil contracts based on price points, YCFCU only exports coffee from the Gedeo zone. And, as they don’t own the coffee, they can’t blend lots from different washing stations unless all parts agree and state the mix transparently on the lot name. All coffees are sorted by hand when brought in by farmers for weighing. The process usually starts at 5 pm and can continue until after dark. All naturals are sun-dried on raised beds and covered overnight and on the warmest hours of the day. The process can take up to 30 days until moisture levels average around 11%. This coffee scores 87.25 on the SCA scale and provides a coffee that is Super sweet and juicy with notes of jasmine, bergamot, sweet spices and an absolute strawberry and blueberry. Smooth and coating, with medium body, mild citric acidity. Also peachy and white tea-like.

The Swiss Water process is an organic, 100% chemical-free option for decaffeination. It was discovered in the 1930s in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, and is commercialised by the Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Company Inc, founded in 1988. This method does not require the addition of chemicals, instead relying on a super saturated green coffee solution called Green Coffee Extract (GCE).To decaffeinate coffee, fresh GCE is introduced to a batch of green coffee. As the GCE is already saturated with all the water-soluble compounds found in green coffee, minus the caffeine, the matching molecules won’t diffuse out of the coffee beans—but the caffeine will. The flavour is retained in the beans while the caffeine is removed.Thanks to some scientific smarts and creativity, it’s possible to have decaf coffee that tastes the same – just without the caffeine!

This coffee is round and smooth, with medium acidity with flavours of roasted peanut, caramel and brown sugar. SCA score 83.5 Established in 2001, as an initiative of a group of 61 coffee producers (12 females and 49 males) with the support of the Fundación para el Desarrollo Empresarial Rural (FUNDER) and a starting capital close to $365. Now integrated by over 1500 farmers, COMSA has grown into a business role model, thanks to the dynamic, responsible and innovative work ethics and vision of its members and workforce. From its foundation, the 61 members of COMSA decided that besides achieving high-quality coffee, their company was going to produce organic coffee and they were going to promote organic agriculture as one of the core principles pillars of their organization. At the time of their establishment, conventional agriculture which uses chemicals was the most common practice in the region. Following their focus on organic agriculture and high-quality coffee, COMSA presented itself to the international markets and recovered trust from international coffee buyers and Honduran coffee producers.They are also certified by Fair Trade and Organic. 

 Flavour Profile A bright and clean fully washed coffee coming from the beautiful mountains of East Timor, giving a well balanced, vibrant and flavourful cup with hints of citrus pomelo, zingy white grape and sweet biscoff biscuit notes. Location Eratoi village, Letefoho Our very first single origin from the island nation of East Timor comes from the smallholder farmers in Eratoi village.  The village of Eratoi is located at an altitude of 1800masl, an ideal height at which to cultivate and process coffee. Led by Simao Pedro de Deus, this group has steadily grown and now consists of 24 smallholder farmers who all have extensive experience in quality coffee processing and consistently produce some of the finest quality speciality coffee in East Timor. Background Situated in South East Asia with Australia to the South, Timor-Leste holds the unenviable accolade of being one of the few countries in the world to have been both colonised and annexed; colonised by Portugal from 1600s to 1975 and annexed by Indonesia from 1975 to 1999. Having finally gained independence in 2002, Timor-Leste is the world’s second youngest nation state and still finding its feet in the geo-political world of the 21st century. Coffee was introduced to the island by the Portuguese and went on to become the country’s leading export by the 1900s, however the industry suffered greatly during the years of Indonesian annexation when the sector was largely ignored.    Fast forward to the present day and you will see that the coffee farmers of Timor-Leste are working hard to collectively carve out a place for Timorese coffee in the global speciality coffee market.  Timorese coffee is truly wild and organically grown underneath the imposing shade trees that dominate the landscape. With time old traditions in processing coffee, passed on from generation to generation, coffee is helping to build up more opportunities for Timorese people to create a consistent and sustainable income from which to support and provide for their families and the local community.   Another factor making Timor Leste notable when it comes to coffee is that it has its own hybrid – the Timor Hybrid – which dates back to the pre-WWII period. Timor Hybrid (often known as Tim Tim or HDT) was born of the spontaneous mating of a Robusta and Arabica plant and is a highly disease resistant and high yielding variety that has now been planted around the world. Timor Hybrid also forms the backbone of the well-known Catimor and Sarchimor varieties. Timor-Leste in many ways has less than optimal conditions for coffee production. An arid climate and short rainy season further complicate the naturally low soil fertility in many of the country’s coffee regions. Despite this, the country is increasing quality and productivity at a rapid rate. Much of the country’s coffee is passively organic, as fertilisers and pesticides have never been introduced, and 100% of the coffee is shade grown. Furthermore, even the smallest improvements can yield huge results. There are several programs in place currently, many of which are being funded by international development organisations, which will fundamentally change the way that coffee is harvested and processed in Timor-Leste. Combined with increased investment in infrastructure by the government – for instance new roads that will ensure easier transport of goods – Timor-Leste is poised to be a reliable producer of good, versatile coffees.  

Flavour Profile We are delighted to have secured some of this fabulous coffee that has been blessed by the copious rainfall at Gasharu. This coffee offers sweet flavours of cinnamon and gingerbread, imagine apple pie. There are rich red fruit flavours, especially strawberry and cools to a rum like finish. This coffee scored 86.75 from the SCA and we feel would work really well as filter, but don't be scared to try it as an espresso. Location Found on the shores of Lake Kivu, and a stone’s throw from Nyungwe National Park, the Gasharu washing station is located near the Rwanda Congo Nile Mountain Chain. Nyungwe Forest National Park is one of the largest montane and most preserved montane rainforests in Central Africa, home to huge biodiversity and an estimated 25% of Africa’s primates. This region’s elevation, soil, and climate are what coffee trees love best. No surprise then that some fantastic coffees come from our land, known for their round, complex profile packed with citrus and other fruits. Coffee plantations in the Gasharu region benefit from their proximity to the continuous of Nyungwe National Park. They get a good amount of rainfall to make the cherries juicier and the coffee fruity.   Beyond beans: this is what community coffee means Gasharu owns 2 washing stations: Gasharu in the Macuba sector (Western Province) and Muhororo in the Kirimbi sector (Southern Province), both named after the villages where they are based. “None of the other companies in our zones are owned by people that live in the community. Coffee for us goes beyond just beans. It is a reason for people to spend time together. It allows families to go out for a meal after being paid and to buy valued dishes like the Igisafuriya and the brochettes, as well as clothes for the family. These are values that outsiders don’t always understand or care about but that add to our quality of life and to the social cohesion of the community.” Many people today would describe coffee as magical. As a child growing up in rural Rwanda in the 1990s, the bean had a real superstitious quality to it for Valentin Kimenyi. “I was told coffee beans were sold abroad to make bullets. This was intriguing to me as I always imagined bullets to be magical, small and yet so noisy and powerful,” he recalls. Today a grown man managing his family’s company, Gasharu Coffee, Valentin no longer believes the old childhood tales. Yet coffee still carries special significance to him as the heart of his community.      Valentin’s parents Celestin Rumenerangabo and Marie Gorette Mukamurenzyi grew up in the communities where they now do business. “My mother is a teacher and taught several people in the community. They also have a small resto-bar where everyone hangs out, watches football and holds their family gatherings,” he says. The family is always present at the weddings of their workers and partners, contributing to the ceremonies with money and goods and cementing their relations. “There have been many occasions when other companies tried to raise their prices for cherry to attract farmers, but the majority of our partners always refused. There is a shared understanding that as Gasharu grows, the community grows.”   Gasharu’s history: from 380 trees to 8 containers The story of Gasharu is full of ups and downs and it goes back to 1976, when 17-years-old Celestin Rumenerangabo bought his first plot and planted 380 coffee trees. Originally from Nyamasheke, he left his mother to work for a family in the capital, Kigali, as a housemaid in 1973. He had lost his father during the 1959 uprising that led to Rwanda’s independence and the family was in hardship. It took him 3 days to walk from his village to Kigali and 3 years to see his mother again. When Celestin was back, he invested all his savings in land and coffee and started working with local brokers. “My father has been business-minded since his boyhood. People in Rwanda tend to do agriculture for subsistence but he was always more interested in commercial agriculture. His only options were tea and coffee and it was his location that made him choose the latter,” Valentin explains. Celestin started working with cherry collection and trading in 1978, before washing stations became active. “Locals would sell cherries or parchment by cups known as Mironko. It was assumed that one cup was the equivalent to 1kg but there were no scales available.” Celestin’s business grew slowly until 1983 when he married Marie Gorette, a 22 years-old teacher that helped him with accounting and supported schooling for other farmers’ children. By 1994 he had 7 hand-crank depulping machines and more than 14 collection sites, providing scales for weighing accuracy and partnering with locals. When the wave of violence of genocide of the Tutsis began, the family fled Rwanda and was forced to abandon the business. Valentin recalls spending “4 years in the Ijwi Island in Lake Kivu, part of Congo’s territory. When we came back in 1998 we had to start from scratch.”   Starting from scratch after the genocide It was the community who saved Valentin’s family. “They got behind us,” he says. With their trust and the help of a former partner, Celestin started over and was trading nearly 30 tons of parchment 2 years later. “In the early 2000s, the government of Rwanda advised local coffee buyers and traders to use more advanced methods of processing to ensure higher quality and returns. My family then decided to build our first washing station, Birembo.” Birembo was sold 6 years later and the failure of the project hit Celestin hard. He had taken a loan from a big trader that he couldn’t repay. “This experience is not uncommon among local coffee farmers. Many got their washing stations bought out or lost them because of loans,” Valentin explains. “My father decided to go out of business, a decision that had a real impact on us, especially me and my brother Jean Christophe, who now lives in the United States. It felt like a loss of the family’s legacy and that we were letting the community down.”  At this point, Valentin was a young agronomy student . “I watched my parents count kilos of cherries all my life. In my head, money always had an association with the weight of coffee. Knowing that my parents could do that business and at the same time help people with school fees for their kids or to pay their healthcare bills was what motivated me to pursue a career in agriculture and business,” he says. “I also didn’t like to see my parents not working. They were not happy.”    Young blood driving innovation It took Valentin a few years to be ready to take over the family’s business. He ended his studies in Kigali with a thesis on Rwanda’s exports and worked in the pepper industry to gather knowledge. “This experience allowed me to learn more about the business and the social impact of specialty processing and innovation. It made me realize that we had not done enough with the opportunities we have, all the potential and rich culture that can be portrayed through coffee.”  Valentin convinced Celestin to go back into business and together they created Gasharu in 2014 and can now produce up to 8 containers of green coffee. Since then they have exported directly to the United States thanks to contacts established by Jean Christoph, who works in public health in Baltimore, and developed their own protocols to process naturals, honeys and experimental lots.  Though some of their coffees have been sold in Europe through importers, Gasharu’s mission is to have direct relationships with a wide network of roasters that want to make a difference at origin. This way, he can “build a sustainable business that will help us keep the community together and create a legacy that will be carried on for generations.” We can’t say there is no magic in that... Flavour Profile We are delighted to have secured some of this fabulous coffee that has been blessed by the copious rainfall at Gasharu. This coffee offers sweet flavours of cinnamon and gingerbread, imagine apple pie. There are rich red fruit flavours, especially strawberry and cools to a rum like finish. This coffee scored 86.75 from the SCA and we feel would work really well as filter, but don't be scared to try it as an espresso.

This washed coffee is grown 1900-2100 metres above sea level and offers a delicate lime citrus and floral aroma.It has a tea like vanilla flavour, with sweet herbal and spicy notes. A well balanced coffee that works especially well with filter brewing styles. Nardos Coffee Exporting company is a third generation family- business organization, tracing its coffee heritage back to the 1960s when the family began the coffee farming at specific locality, known as Guji Zone, Oromia. where currently the best quality coffee of Guji is outsourced. Nardos exports annually on average about 2,000 tons of washed and natural coffee of specialty and mainstream worldwide.   Nardos owns its own family coffee 152 hectares farm with 2069 out-growers. Which supports more than 12,000 families having over 3,500 hectares of coffee farms in Guji zone which has Organic, RFA, UTZ, Fair TSA and C.A,F.E. Practices certificates. Nardos coffee Exporting Company is currently equipped with different coffee processing facilities. It owns 7 wet coffee pulping industries, 5 natural coffee hullers and high Tech coffee cleaning and warehouse Enterprise with capacity of 5-6 tons per hour, in Addis Ababa.

This coffee has an SCA score of 85.75 offering lots of dark chocolate, candy and red ripe fruit in the nose that translates to nutella, dark berries and stone fruit in the cup profile. Cup is balanced, with medium tartaric acidity, medium- high body, and berry like finish. Sweet, with a nice texture. Ademilson Noiman Borges can trace his family history at Sitio Grota Fria to the turn of the 20th century, when his great-grandfather owned the farm. The first coffee crops were planted in 1910. In 1988, Ademilson’s grandfather divided the land among his children, including Ademilson’s father, who continued to cultivate coffee and farm dairy cows. His father named that plot Sitio Grota Fria. In 1996, Ademilson leased part of the land from his aunt and planted his first crop of coffee, which was Mundo Novo. In 2007, Ademilson’s father passed Sitio Grota Fria to him and Ademilson immediately applied for Certifica Minas certification, which certifies compliance with global trade regulations. Ademilson also set out to renew the trees on the land that had become old and unproductive, replanting with seedlings. Ademilson faced his father’s reluctance – his father produced coffee in traditional ways and believed that specialty coffee was time consuming and expensive to produce – in transitioning to specialty coffee but, with the help of the Associação dos Produtores do Alto da Serra (APAS), he was able to begin attending lectures and trainings to improve their crop. His first harvest in 2013 scored 81.5 points. Now, his coffees are regularly scoring above 85 points. Since his first harvest, he’s focused on cultivation, post-harvest processing and quality control. Unusually for Brazil, coffee is selectively hand harvested. Ripe, red cherry is laid in thin layers on patios to sun dry. Cherry is raked frequently to ensure even drying. It takes up to 17 days for cherry to dry. n a country with around 25,000 Fair Trade growers, winning best Fair Trade coffee is no small feat, but that is exactly what Ademilson Noiman Borges did last harvest. As a participant in Casa Brasil’s Selective Harvest Project, Ademilson became the first APAS member to win best Fair Trade coffee in Brazil. The Associação dos Produtores do Alto da Serra (APAS) was founded in 2006, to help producers organize in a collective way. Working together helps producers improve coffee quality, increase profitability and provide a better quality of life. In 2013, with help from SEBRAE and EMATER the association achieved its Fairtrade certification, making it possible to reach many of their goals. In 2019, they started Alto da Serra Producers' Cooperative (APASCOFFEE) with the intention of streamlining the marketing process and exporting with emphasis on specialty and certified coffee.

The Eastern Highlands is a mountainous province encompassing the Kratke and Bismarck ranges interspersed with broad valleys including where this coffee is grown, the Okapa valley. It is the leading producer of coffee in the country, and the Highland Organic Agriculture Cooperative (HOAC) is one of the oldest Faritrade Certified organizations in Oceania. They were originally registered in 2003, certified in 2005 and now comprise of around 3000 small holder producers spread across 32 village communities spread over 500 km2. The premium earned has been spent on providing fresh water for 11 of these communities, as well as helping with infrastructure such as roads which makes a huge difference given the isolation of the villages. Coffee is grown mainly by smallholders in ‘gardens’ – a small plot of land that contains everything from a few trees up to a three-hectare plot at most. Trees here can be 25 years or older, and in general trees in the country are a lot older than you typically find in other countries. This often leads to lower yields and so less productivity on the farms. Once picked coffee is pulped, it is then dry fermented for 24 hours in wooden or plastic boxes before being washed and dried on sails – stretched tarpaulin drying beds – or raised beds. This is covered at night to protect from any effects of dew. Coffee is then collected and taken to a centralized dry mill in Goroka for sorting, cleaning and exporting the coffee. Most varietals were introduced to the country in the 1950’s from African and Australian research stations, though coffee is first recorded in PNG in 1873, and was growing in the Rabaul Botanical Gardens by 1890, but was not grown in Simbu until the 1960’s. More confusingly, French Missionaries planted coffee in the Kilimanjaro area in the 1890’s and you sometimes see that given as thesource for Arusha. This has assumed to be from a Bourbon heritage, though other countries have had coffee tested from this lineage and had that proven to be of Typica lineage. This coffee has tasting notes of dried fruits, vanilla and smoky with natural brightness. This coffee shares the low-toned richness of coffees from neighboring Indonesia, but is particularly sturdy, dense, and crisply robust. This is a coffee that should maintain authority in the face of enthusiastic additions of whitener and sweetener.

You can expect dark chocolate, pecan nuts with dried fruit flavours with a hint of mixed spices.  Founding Agri Evolve In 2016 Agri Evolve originally started as a collection point for both Dried Ugandan Arabica (DRUGAR) and cherries. The typical approach to processing coffee in the Rwenzori Mountains has been for farmers to process it themselves. Typically drying cherries on tarpaulin in the sun. Sourcing this DRUGAR was considerably easier in the beginning than trying to purchase ripe cherries, it turns out old habits do die hard! Following investment in processing equipment, demonstration farms and hiring experienced staff. The second-year harvest was a drastic improvement in terms of sourcing unprocessed ripe cherries. After this first season, processing facilities improved considerably and equipment including; a washer separator, mechanical dryers, Hulling machine and green-houses were all introduced to the station. The interest in Agri Evolve grew amongst the farming community as we were seen as a staple reliable place to sell coffee, we consistently paid good prices and always paid on time, which, as basic as it is, made a huge difference for farmers. By the end of the second season Agri Evolve was given some outstanding reviews from a Japanese importer who thought the African Moon coffee was fantastic and "full of potential", which in turn kickstarted the interest in high-quality Rwenzori Coffee that we sourced and processed. Scaling Production Over the course of the next 5-years Agri Evolve rapidly expanded to become the largest employer in the region bringing new economic stability and job opportunities to the community. This growth was driven by an ever-increasing reputation for high-quality coffee from the Rwenzori Mountains. With a focus on staff empowerment and education, Jonny has managed to build the team to over 50 skilled individuals sourcing and processing coffee from thousands of farmers across the Rwenzori mountains. The focus in recent years has shifted to building a new station in Bugoye. Introducing Buying Centres in strategic locations across the Rwenzori’s has been one of the catalysts for growth. Creating a constant physical presence ensures farmers that Agri Evolve is going to be there come the harvest, The convenient locations for farmers also drastically reduce the effort required to travel to market.   Region & Country Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda Varietal SL14 & SL28 Altitude 1800 - 2000 m.a.s.l Soil Type Haplic Phaeozems Average Number of Farms per Lot 300 - 500 Average Farm Size 1.5 - 2.2 acres Drying Methods Sun dried inside polly tunnels Drying Time 20 - 30 Days   This is our first coffee from Omwani Coffee Co. and it will not be our last, enjoy.