The Story

Kenya has one of the most developed and well-regarded specialty coffee traditions in the world: meticulous processing, distinct varieties, and a cooperative system built around smallholder farmers bringing cherry to a central factory. That system, when it works the way it's supposed to, produces some of the most recognizable cups in specialty coffee — bright, complex, unmistakably Kenyan. Karatu is a good example of that system working exactly like it should.

Karatu Coffee Factory has been processing coffee since 1965, sitting on 11 acres just outside Gatundu town in Kiambu County and serving smallholder farmers across four nearby villages. Farmers bring ripe cherry to the factory, it gets weighed, and they're paid on the spot. Simple and direct. From there it moves through a disk depulper, ferments for 24 hours, and gets washed clean — 72 hours total from cherry to parchment. Drying on raised beds takes one to two weeks depending on the weather, and the farms themselves are intercropped with banana and maize, with grevillea and macadamia trees for shade.

In the cup you're getting nectarine and red plum — that stone fruit brightness that Kenya just does — with a finish that rounds out into maple syrup. It's a really lovely one.