It's not often we'll have 2 coffees from the same origin, let alone the same producer, but this years crop of Ibanda from the Rwenzori Coffee Co is mind meltingly good. Sourced directly from our good friend Martin of Agri Evolve, we managed to secure a limited amount of this high scoring beautiful celebration of the best Ugandan terroir can offer. We have worked with Martin since 2016 (when we were still roasting coffee from a garage!). Every step of our journey together has been insightful and reciprocal and has taught us more about coffee farming and processing than any other, eventually resulting in our first food industry, Great Taste, award in 2020. Hand picked and sorted, only the ripe coffee cherries make it to the Rwenzori wash plant where the coffee is wet milled and left to sun dry after a short fermentation period. This process allows some of the remaining coffee cherry mucilage to impart further moisture and acids into the beans than standard natural processing and sets this origin apart from any other we've ever encountered. It also creates the right mix of sugars and acids for us to turn into incredible boozy strawberry and ice cream notes in the final cup. It's the intensity which sets this coffee apart from our other current Ugandan coffee from the same producer. The flavours are bursting, not subtle, and leap readily on the tongue and on the nose. We had to tear up the roasting rule book with this coffee and start again from scratch due to its unique freshness, moisture content and sugar availability. The result is a boozy strawberry celebration of exploding summer fruits delivered with an ice cream sweetness. Perfect for filter or pour over but also a unique and rewarding experience on espresso when dialled in right. As an espresso paired with milk this coffee turns into strawberry ice-cream in a cup...we're not kidding, it's mind bending.
