Uganda is located in prime coffee growing geography – situated on the equator, bordered by the famous producing countries of Rwanda and Kenya and rich with the mountainous, humid & fertile terrain necessary for coffee production. Yet due to the logistical and administrative challenges in coffee purchasing, this origin has often been tragically overlooked by speciality coffee buyers, favouring its more famous and (sometimes) more straightforward neighbours.

Yet Uganda is not to be overlooked – capable of producing some incredible coffees with distinctive flavours unique even in the diverse panoply of coffee styles found in East Africa.

This lot comes from smallholder farmers located in the Rwenzori mountains national park. The Rwenzori Mountains (known as “The Mountains of the Moon”) reach nearly 5000 MASL at their highest peaks and stretch for over 120km along western Uganda, and are a rich home of biodiverse cloud forests. This lot of coffee was produced by smallholder farmers in the Bakonzo tribe, with an average farm size of around 2ha. Working with Ugandan partner companies (Kyagalanyi Coffee Limited & Agri Evolve), VOLCAFE has set up coffee cherry purchasing stations – allowing traceability, quality separation and higher payments to the farmers who contribute cherry to the stations. In support of this, they are able to offer training, quality incentivisation and social programs – empowering economic sustainability for the coffee producers in this area.

This particular lot is a separated production from farms growing coffee at the highest elevations (around 2000-2200MASL, right at coffee’s upper endurance level of altitude). Altitude’s particular contribution to coffee quality is not the air pressure, as some might think, but that of a wider swing in temperature between the daytime heat and the nighttime cool. The cooler nights delay the maturation of the coffee cherries, giving the two seeds inside each coffee cherry time to grow rich with organic acids and sugars, resulting in a dense bean rich with complex flavours once roasted. But to farm at these high altitudes comes with remote, challenging and steep terrain – so Agri Evolve have invested in donkeys to help move the collected cherries from the most isolated, highest elevation farms to the purchasing stations, allowing the cherries to arrive much fresher & preventing over-fermentation during travel.

Processed as a natural, this coffee is a stunning expression of Uganda’s potential. 

  Caravan Coffee Roasters are proud members of 1% for the Planet. For more information please visit https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org

BREWING GUIDE 

Roasted to highlight the fruity sweetness of this coffee, we’re pulling shots at 18g in, 42g out in 30-32s. With milk, expect flavours of strawberry cheesecake. For more brewing tips and tricks, visit our Brew Guides.