Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005
Issue link: http://baristamagazine.epubxp.com/i/686001
37 www.baristamagazine.com real-estate development project, like so many coffee estates in Kenya. After he began working at Gorilla Summit, he reaffi rmed our fi ndings of dry fermentation, wet soak, and drying times. With his input and contributions, we were able to bring the coffees up from 80–82 points to a solid 83–86. Over the next two days, Gerald and I go backward in the supply chain to work on cherry collection and farm management. This means going into the fi eld, meeting with smallholder farmers, walking their plots of land, and purchasing cherry. For cherry collection, we are focusing on Gorilla Summit's Rugyeyo collection facility, about 12 kilometers northeast of Kanungu. Over the years, Gerald noticed that the cherry from this area and these farmers is considerably better in quality than the rest. Upon arrival to Rugyeyo, we head up to the farming area. The fi rst thing I notice is that coffee here is grown from 1,800–2,000 meters above sea level (masl). We begin to walk the coffee fi elds, and I run into a second surprise: Most of the trees appear to be 40+ years old, with minimal pruning and poor overall maintenance. In a best-case scenario, this "wild" approach to farming could lead to mindblow- ing coffee. Sadly, in this case, it leads to low productivity and dis- ease-prone plants. While most of us in the coffee industry are aware of the coffee-leaf rust epidemic in Central America, not many are aware of it in East Africa. Here in southwestern Uganda, we see leaf rust higher than 1,800 masl, which is scary. I believe that the combination of poor farm management and global climate change has been extremely Cherry sorting at the Gorilla Summit's Rugyeyo cherry collection before weighing. A M U S T H A V E F O R B A R I S TA S M I C R O M E T R I C P R E C I S I O N E XC E P T I O N A L O U T P U T 1 2 0 KG / H — A N T I STAT I C SYST E M — R W W W. S A N T O S . F R 63