Gasharu coffee is managed by Valentin Kamenyi. Growing up in rural Rwanda in the 1990s, coffee had a mythical quality to it. "I was told coffee beans were sold abroad to make bullets. This was intriguing to me as I always imagined bullets to be magical, small and yet so noisy and powerful,” he recalls. Of course these childhood tales are now a thing of the past, yet coffee still carries special significance to him as the heart of his community.
Ripe cherries are carefully selected - first by hand and then by flotation. The cherries are then fermented in an oxygen-deprived environment for 72 hours, then dried in the sun on raised African beds for 30-40 days depending on the weather. During this period the coffee is sorted by hand to remove any physical defects and is regularly turned to ensure even drying and prevent over fermentation or mould formation. The coffee is covered during rain or midday sun to protect it from damage.
Every day a quality controller tests the relative humidity until a value of 12% is reached, after which the coffee is bagged and stored in a cool, dry warehouse to rest pending secondary processing (hulling, grading, sorting etc.)
This is a coffee with lots of personality – plenty of fruity flavours, tons of sweetness, vibrancy from the anaerobic part of the processing and so we think just lean into it. When brewing across all methods we’ve increased our dose – for filter use 64g/litre as a start point, when brewing espresso we’ve used 18g rather than 17g, but on home espresso machines maybe add 0.5g extra in first and go from there.
Grind: If you need your coffee ground, select on the dropdown. Let us know in the "Special Instructions" if there is any other specific brew method you need the coffee ground for.
