Five Senses Coffee Blog

Kongo Coffee will get even better

There are days when you get so much return on the investment of effort. Yesterday was one of those days.

The specialty coffee movement has gained so much momentum over the last couple of years. The Australian consumer has started to demand coffee of much higher quality through supply chains that have a high level social consciousness. As a craft roaster in Australia, we have been looking at ways that we can access better coffees while at the same time input practically into the lives of the people we are buying from. We feel that we have an opportunity here in the Pacific to work with growers to achieve this end. This visit to Kongo Coffee has gone a very long way to helping us get this result.

In terms of quality, I’m convinced that the biggest gains in cup quality can be made at the point of harvesting. Just like we did in Bali, I spoke at length with Jerry about spread of ripeness of the cherries being picked. Just like we did in Bali, we sat down with a bag of cherries and sorted through them and picked out a sample of cherries that represented the type of cherries we believe they now need to pick to stay ahead of the pack of “also ran” coffee.

Sorting the cherries

Perfect ripeness

One of the most important keys to our success here will be having the farmers on board and understanding exactly what harvesting habits they need to change. Jerry has engaged two full time guys to help with this process. Elimbari coffee only comes from a few selected family groups. Jerry will be calling meetings with all these growers over the next few weeks and start the process of re-educating them about escalation of quality he is expecting from them. It isn’t going to be easy – trees are scattered across mountains and valleys and separated by rivers and forests. I headed up to the foot of the Mt Elimbari to meet with Mark – one of the Elimbari farmers. It was great because many of his family were around and I was able to meet them. Mark’s village also happens to be Jerry’s Grandma’s “ass place”.

Mark and family - growers at the base of Mt Elimbari

Kongo staff and Mark

Jerry overlooking coffee growing country - rugged as heck!

Coffee trees and cliffs

Coffee trees under the trees

Once coffee is ripe, it’s harvested, pulped, washed and then sundried. It then goes into the mill to get the parchment removed – resulting in piles and piles of green beans. But the effort to get better quality doesn’t stop here. Green beans range vastly in size and there is always an assortment of defected beans in the mix. The number of defects in a Lot of green beans affects the coffees grading and its classification. At 5 Senses we’ve adopted the SCAA specialty coffee grading system. One of my jobs this trip was to go through this grading system with Jerry and leave them with the resources to help them understand the system and to have a better idea of how good the quality of the coffee needs to be to be able to be classified as true Specialty Coffee. We spent a good length of time on classification and on cupping in their Kongo Coffee quality lab.

Our next shipment!

Looking for defects with SCAA reference materials

Cupping export samples

Kongo Coffee also roasts coffee for the local market. Helen works pretty hard on getting the colour right but I was able to give them some of the information about roasting time and ramp rates. It’s a great little roastery. Jerry is talking about sending some of his people over to us for some roasting training.

Introducing Helen the roaster

Burners giving them grief but nothing gets them down

Kongo Coffee is an incredible place to be. Jerry has assembled a team with incredible experience and skill. It is no coincidence that the coffee that hails from the base of this mountain and passes though Jerry’s infrastructure is so good.

The team at the foot of Mt Elimbari

TEAM KONGO COFFEE LIMITED

From Left to Right

Front row:

Tekepo Kumuno – Assistant Project Officer, five years with Kongo Coffee Limited.

Kilson Liripu – Elimbari Specialty Coffee Project Officer, 18 years Post Harvest experience with CIC.

David Rumba Rumba – Operations Manager, 14 years CIC experience in Quality Control & Management.

Jerry Kapka – Managing Director, 20 years in coffee buying, processing, exporting.

Back Row:

Philip Bai – Driver & Trained Elimbari Specialty Coffee Producer.

Ricky Laki – Quality Control Manager, 10 years with CIC & Kongo Coffee Limited.

Me

TEAM PARTNERSHIP

Looking older than when we met in 1997