It’s an incredible opportunity to taste a single coffee processed three different ways. In the journey of coffee from ripe fruit to roasted bean, processing is the determinant fork in the road that can lead to wildly different results in the cup. One of the best ways to illuminate the effect processing has on coffee is to use one coffee (from the same farmer(s) in the same location harvested at the same time, etc) with the processing method being the only variable. This is our fifth year buying coffee from the Kibingo Washing Station. Having recognized their meticulous processing in previous seasons, we asked them to conduct something of a risky experiment: employ washed, natural, and anaerobic processes on the same coffee, and well... see what happens. We don’t want to spoil the ending, but we will say, there’s some magic in those three bags. WASHED Ripened cherries were stripped of their fruit (pulped) and fermented in water for 12 hours. They were then washed before an additional overnight soak. After a final rinse, the coffee was laid out on African raised beds for two to three weeks. The resulting cup is crisp and amazingly structured with bountiful aromatics and a unique brightness.