Kenyan Rianjagi

Papa Palheta‘s Must. Drink. Coffee project is happy development in the Singapore coffee scene. I’d been making enquiries since the beginning of 2011 about coffee subscription programmes from Has Bean Coffee and Square Mile Coffee Roasters in the UK and Counterculture, Stumptown and Intelligentsia in the US. Most sent their regrets saying that the roasted beans would be fairly old by the time they racked up the large carbon footprint across oceans and continents to Singapore.

Unfortunately, since the FIXPATRIX fixie crew delivered the “first batch of drugs” while i was away, the Kenya Rianjagi beans, though locally roasted, were probably already almost 3 weeks old by the time i got to brewing.

Process: pulp natural
Roast profile: City+ (or City)

As recommended by the M.D.C. team, this was brewed on the Hario V60 dripper:
Bean weight: 24g
Grind: err, didn’t know what 4.5 is on the Hario Skerton Ceramic Hand Grinder Coffee Mill is so winged it
Pre-infusion: 92°C, 60 seconds
Total water weight: 300g

Papa P’s tasting notes say:”Packed with plumy, very plumy aroma that leaves a long, bittersweet medium level of body and concluding with a zesty berry-like finish”. I thought dry aroma of ground beans was rather citrusy and that the brew was quite sweet with soft acidity and medium body.

The problem with describing coffee and wine, I find, is having to describe flavours by referencing other foods – dark chocolate, grapefruit, cloves… This layers on an additional vagueness to communication of taste since the tasters’ experiences with the descriptors must also be subjective.

In any case, this was a delicious two-cup start to the weekend. Was interested to learn that the Kenya Rianjagi varietals were SL28, SL34 or Ruiru 11. Some of the types recommended in Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation’s Arabica Coffee Manual for Lao PDR for planting on the Bolaven Plateau.