Episode 655: Kenya Tegu AA

The Tegu wet mill sits at around 1,700 metres above sea level near the town of Karatina in Nyeri, Kenya. It's rather close to 2 other amazing mills you've probably heard of - Kieni and Karagoto. 

It's owned by the Tekangu Coffee Farmers Cooperative Society, which got its name from combining the names of their three mills: Tegu, Karogoto and Ngunguru. It is made up of mainly smallholder farms, each with an average of just 100 trees. Much like Kieni and Karagoto, this mill has seen success in recent years and has secured some really great prices for the farmers that deliver their coffee cherries to it.

Once the coffee cherries are delivered to the farm, they are spread out on a patio for removal of any under-ripe cherries, over-ripe cherries or foreign objects before they head over to the washing station.

The freshly-sorted coffee cherries are then decanted into a hopper, where clean water from the nearby Kirigau Springs is poured over them. This pushes the cherries down between two rotating abrasive slabs which mechanically wash the outer flesh off the cherries, exposing the beans and mucilage. 

The beans then pass to a water tank to be sorted (primarily by removal of any floating beans) and the sunken, dense beans are transported into a fermentation tank to be left overnight. The next day, once the mucilage has broken down, water is poured into the fermentation tanks to wash the beans again, and remove any remaining mucilage.

There's an upfront punch of blackcurrant acidity here, which softens out into ripe nectarines. That lingers through towards the finish, where a sweet, golden sugar note hangs through into the aftertaste.

• Country: Kenya
• County: Nyeri
• Nearest town: Karatina
• Mill: Tegu
• Owners: Tekangu Coffee Farmers Cooperative Society
• Contributing farmers: 1,700+
• Altitude: 1,700 m.a.s.l.
• Processing method: Washed
• Varietals: SL28, SL34 and Ruiru 11
• Screen size: AA