Queen City Coffee - Muhari Washed Rwanda (12oz.)
About The Product: This season their friends in Rwanda hooked it up with two incredible lots from the Muhari station in Rwanda's mountainous Western Province near the shores of Lake Kivu. This region is known for specialty coffee production and the Muhari station lives up to this billing. Through support from Gihanga, the technical and environmental assistance provided to local farmers is building a sustainable foundation for coffee production in the community. Such assistance includes ag-inputs like compost and organic pesticides as well as a community-funded nursery to cultivate not just coffee trees but indigenous tree species that provide a multitude of important environmental services for both producers and the wider community.
This specific coffee is their washed processed lot. Coffee cherries are collected at the washing station from surrounding smallholder farmers. The cherries are hand-sorted and floated for grading upon collection. At the end of the day's collection, cherries are de-pulped and fermented for 12 hours, washed, and then placed for sun-drying on raised beds till optimal moisture loss has occurred at which point the parchment is stored till dry milling in Kigali.
About The Company: We believe that honest relationships, from farmers to consumers, achieve an equitable and sustainable coffee supply chain. In many ways, Queen City started in the mid-2000s while we worked, researched, and played in rural Africa. From Zimbabwe to Rwanda, we spent nearly a decade coordinating humanitarian programs, organizing research projects, and kicking around on humble soccer fields with friends. We learned about community in Africa — real, honest community.
Life eventually brought us back to our roots, back to Colorado and the great city of Denver. Along the way, we indulged our passion for coffee by moonlighting as baristas and roasters, and this made our next project an easy progression — we love our farmer friends + we love our city, the Queen City of the Plains + we love coffee — so we started a company that combines all these things!
Collective coffee means we’re doing this together — we have real, tangible connection with our coffee farmers; we know the conditions of their production; we then small-batch roast their coffee in the city we love and we proudly serve it in Denver’s historic Baker neighborhood. We believe everyone is welcome to this ragtag group because good coffee should build the collective good.