Short Story - A Special Blend

Short Story - A Special Blend

Featuring Rwanda Kilimbi + Burundi Businde

We’ve been working with the very small Rwandan importing company Higa Coffee Company since 2019.  We met the founder, Kenny Ntwali, when he popped by our roastery in the Summer of that year with his co-founder Julia Huber.  Kenny is from Rwanda, and they were both exploring the idea of founding a Rwandan coffee importing company and were traveling around the US to different roasteries doing market research.  When Higa started bringing in its first years’ coffees in 2020, we were very impressed by the quality and we’ve been buying from them each year since!   

This year, Higa Coffee Company has decided to shift the focus of its business away from importing coffee.  To mark the last year of sourcing coffees from them, we decided to create a special blend to honor the relationship, as well as to share a little more of Higa’s story.  

Why this blend? 

We focus a lot on offering fresh crop coffees for our menu.  In the industry, these are coffees that are freshly harvested and processed (less than a year since last harvest). Additionally for us at BCR, we choose coffees which are typically less than 6-9 months old. We find these coffees are the most dynamic, vibrant and complex!  

Many other specialty roasters share this same approach.  As green (raw, unroasted) coffee ages, it tends to lose its edge over time, becoming less dynamic.  However, this can often leave past crop coffees (those more than a year old) overlooked when designing coffee menus. This flavor loss is not always the case, however, and with a roast profile crafted to account for the age of the coffee, past crop coffees can present a flavor profile that is still dynamic, sweet and complex (albeit a different flavor profile from when it was freshest).  Moreover, by overlooking past crop coffees, roasters miss out on the chance to help move older coffees from the inventory of farmers or importers. 

In considering how we wanted to approach this blend, we chose a couple of past crop coffees from Higa’s inventory. Rwanda Kilimbi and Burundi Businde are two coffees that we’ve offered as single origins on our menu in recent years, and when we heard about Higa’s shift away from importing and saw a decent quantity of these two lots (from 2023 harvest) still in its inventory, we thought it would be a great chance to create a special blend using these components. 

Catching Up with Kenny

We sat down with Kenny to discuss the work of Higa (from a rear view mirror perspective).

We asked him about some of the challenges he encountered in importing. In the beginning of the company, Higa focused on offering coffees by terroir (or region), each with a different flavor profile.  The result was a large number of microlots.  This caused some difficulty in selling through a larger number of coffee offerings.  Eventually, the company focused on offering fewer lots, and focusing on only the highest quality coffees from individual washing stations. 

Another challenge was pricing.  Rwandan and Burundian coffees tend to be a little pricier, relatively.  The main reason he cited is economies of scale. Many roasters are only buying small quantities, and in order for costs to be covered, importers need to move large volumes. There are also other logistical challenges: 

• Rwanda and Burundi are about the size of Vermont, and are among the densest countries in the world.  This generates some infrastructure challenges (and risks) during travel.

• Most washing stations collect coffee from about 800 individual farmers. The cost of processing (from cherry to green) is higher because of the logistics of working with this many farmers.

• Rwanda and Burundi are both landlocked countries, so coffee has to travel through another country to get to either of the two closest ports.  

There is also the perception of the well-known “potato” defect - a condition in the green coffee that lends a very pungent “potato-y” flavor and aroma which many find off-putting.  While much work has been done in recent years to control this in coffees from Rwanda and Burundi, and the occurrence is greatly minimized, the perception is still present and some customers will avoid coffee from those origins entirely. 

In addition to the challenges, Kenny also expounded on some of the successes of Higa. Since 2020, he reports that it was able to bring over $500k into these communities, support 2 year-round employees, and, along with other companies, help to bring Rwandan and Burundian coffees to the forefront of specialty coffee. 

We asked if there was a message to coffee drinkers he’d like to share. He mentioned that focusing on paying more for quality coffee will go a long way for farmers, since the cost of production for many farmers is higher than the commodity price. By focusing on developing and selling higher quality specialty coffee, farmers are able to get much higher prices. 

We asked Kenny what comes next for him, now that Higa is shifting focus. He is looking at becoming a farmer himself! With the focus on quality that he brought to Higa, we expect great results if he does go down this path.

What does it taste like? 

The roasting approach for this coffee focuses on developing sugars a little more than we would for fresh crop coffees from Rwanda or Burundi.  This will result in a little less tartness and more deep, complex sugars.  In the cup, expect flavors of mulberry, maple, and dark chocolate with a rich and syrupy body.

And that is the backstory on Short Story! 

All coffees are available in whole bean only. 

We roast and ship on Mondays and Thursdays.  Orders placed Thursday through Sunday at midnight will roast and ship on Monday.  Orders placed Monday through Wednesday at midnight will roast and ship on Thursday.

Importer: Higa Coffee