This is a washed SHG micro-lot from producer Kellton Obed Urrutia and his farm Las Minas in the Celaque region of western Honduras.

THE PRODUCER

Kellton Obed Urrutia Trejo is a 29-year-old farmer from Erandique district, in the state of Lempira in Western Honduras. Kellton is the son of coffee producers Saul Antonio and Ruth Arely, and as such as grew up learning ‘the ropes’ of farming: from agronomy to harvesting and processing. From a young age, he helped out in his spare time with activities like pulping, washing and drying. In 2008, Kellton graduated from high school at the Pompilio Ortega agricultural school in Macuelizo, Santa Barbara and in 2009 was offered a scholarship to study at Escuela Agricola Panamericana El Zamorano which he rejected to work as an agricultural instructor in the Salomon Sorto Zelaya technical institute in Santa Cruz, Lempira.

In 2010 Kellton left his teaching duties to work in potato & dairy farming on a small scale. His parents - being lifelong coffee farmers - weren’t too impressed with this move but supported him anyway. To encourage Kellton to rediscover coffee, his father loaned 1ha of land for coffee production which Kellton was able to pay back with the production. Since then Kellton has acquired more land and started to put his expertise to use with specialty coffee, re-discovering a love for the crop which formed the backdrop of his upbringing.

THE PROCESS

Harvesting is carried out selectively and by hand. Ripe cherries are mechanically pulped and fermented in concrete tanks for 12-16 hours depending on ambient conditions. After thorough washing, the parchment coffee is sun-dried on a concrete patio for 6-8 days (until the optimum moisture content is reached.) At this point, the coffee is rested in a clean, cool and dry environment before secondary processing (milling, grading, sorting).

This is a grade 1, organic certified Arabica coffee from The Kayon Mountain Coffee Farm in the Guji zone of Ethiopia’s Oromia Region. Established in 2012, the farm started with the aim of producing high-quality coffee in a socially and environmentally responsible manner; it is privately owned by Ato Esmael and his family.

The farm is a 240-hectare plot in fertile sandy clay loam soil beneath a canopy of natural forest. The farm is organically certified and uses animal dung as its main source of fertilizer. Coffee is harvested from October to February by people from local villages. Some of it is washed, fermented and dried on raised beds and the rest is left for the production of high quality natural processed coffee. The freshly picked coffee cherry is washed with the low-density beans being channeled away for a lower grade. The clean high-grade coffees are then placed onto raised beds where for around 12 to 20 days’ drying time it is meticulously hand-turned and picked over to remove any defect beans. Finally, the dried cherries are milled to reveal the beautiful natural processed coffee beans which undergo further sorting to remove any remaining defect beans.

This coffee is processed at Migoti washing station in Mutambu Commune of Bujumbura Province, Burundi. This coffee is the red bourbon cultivar of the arabica varietal, grown on different hills around the Migoti station at altitudes of 1600-1950 meters above sea level (masl). (The Migoti station is located at 1850 masl.) Nyabiraba Hill has 135 farmers with over 15,000 coffee trees. The word Nyabiraba is translated as “place of seeing things.” The hill is about 30 kilometers from the washing station and sits at roughly 1800 meters above sea level. The soil is loam and clay.