Bright, juicy and sweetly rounded, Tegu AA is everything we love about a classic washed Kenyan coffee.
Tegu AA brings together coffee from smallholder growers in Nyeri, Kenya, where rich volcanic soils help set the stage for some seriously delicious cups. This blend of four varieties has plenty to say: tart cranberry, lively grapefruit and the soft, baked-fruit sweetness of peach cobbler.
Most of these producers tend around 100 coffee trees, delivering their ripe cherries to Tegu Factory for processing. Part of the Tekangu Farmers’ Cooperative Society, Tegu sits between Mount Kenya and the Aberdare Range, with a whole community of growers behind every lot.
After careful sorting, the cherries are pulped and fermented for 16–18 hours, then washed and given another long soak in fresh water. Slow drying on raised beds takes up to 21 days. That care comes through in a clean, fruit-filled cup with bright acidity and enough sweetness to keep everything nicely in balance.
This coffee comes to us from Reku, a small area within the coffee-growing community of Banko Gotiti in Gedeb, Ethiopia. Gedeb is known for producing some seriously expressive coffees, and its washed lots are especially loved for their clean, bright character and layers of fruit and florals.
This amazing coffee was processed at the Banko Gotiti washing station, where Habtamu Getu oversees coffee from a few hundred smallholder farmers in the surrounding area. Most farm just one or two hectares, growing coffee alongside other crops. Freshly picked cherries arrive at the station each day, where they’re carefully sorted for ripeness before being depulped and fermented overnight in fresh water.
After fermentation, the coffee is rinsed and moved to raised beds to dry for around 15–18 days, with plenty of attention along the way. The result is a beautifully classic washed Ethiopian coffee: crisp and juicy, with a delicate tea-like quality and plenty of sweetness.
