Muthua-ini AB | Kenya

Raspberry, orange, caramel 

Process: Washed
Varietal: SL28 & 34
Producer: Multiple small holders 

The vast majority of the coffee bought and sold in Kenya is traded through the national auction system, where marketing agents enter cooperatives' and estates’ coffee and traders come to bid. The main buyers from this auction system are large multinationals, who then offer the lots to importers and roasters. Unfortunately, this has been the only way to purchase Kenyan coffee for a long time and we’ve become frustrated with the lack of transparency, poor service and price volatility. In the last couple of years we have started buying directly from the auction using a local Kenyan company, who bid on the coffee on our behalf, after we have cupped through auction samples filtered by a local cupper. This was not only a conscious decision to support local, Kenyan businesses, but also to make the supply chain more efficient and save money, in order to pass on those savings to roasters. We hope that these savings help increase the presence of Kenyan coffees on roasters’ menus. This is intended to be the first part of a plan to work on the transparency limitations in Kenya and ultimately the goal is to avoid using the auction system at all, by working directly with farmers’ associations, cooperatives and small estates, and not through a marketing agent.

Kenya Muthuaini AB is sourced from family owned farms organized around the Muthuaini Factory (wet mill) in Nyeri County, Kenya. The Mutheka Farmers Co-operative Society manages the Muthuaini Factory, which processes cherry from members who generally cultivate around 200 coffee trees on half-acre plots. Small plots give these producers more control to strategically pick and deliver only the ripest cherry to the factory. Additional cherry sorting is also done at the factory before the coffee is depulped, fermented and washed. After the coffee is washed, it’s soaked in fresh water for long periods of time to solidify the hallmark Kenyan profiles.

Muthua-ini is a Kikuyu name for “a place with many ants”, this place was famous of the ants which destroyed almost everything including the plantation of sugarcanes and had built very long ant hills which were visible from a far distance.