Green Tanzania Peaberry - 1#

1# Green / Unroasted

Tanzania Peaberry

TANZANIA

With its relatively close proximity to Ethiopia, and its shared border with Kenya, some of Tanzania’s population has had a long history and culture relationship with coffee, namely the Haya people, for whom the plant was not used so much as a beverage as a chewed fruit. Coffee (probably Robusta) was grown for this domestic purpose until German colonists essentially mandated that farmers grow Arabica coffee as a cash crop, spreading the plants’ reach within the country and developing the industry around Mount Kilimanjaro.

Germany lost control of the colony to the British after the First World War, and the British attempted to develop a more efficient and profitable coffee industry along the lines of Kenya’s. Cooperatives of smallholder farmers started to organize in the 1920s to try to improve market access, but it was many years before Tanzanian coffees really caught on internationally.

In 1964, after both countries achieved independence from Britain, Tanganyika and Zanzibar were combined to establish the Republic of Tanzania—hence the country’s name, Tan/Zania. Growers attempted aggressive growth in the 1970s but had difficulty increasing production. The 1990s saw efforts to reform and privatize coffee exports, allowing growers to sell more directly. Today, in most of the Western world, Tanzanian coffees are famous primarily as separated-out peaberry lots.

Peaberries are a kind of coffee seed that forms individually inside a cherry, as opposed to when the fruit typically develops two "flat" beans, which are larger and sit together like peanuts in a shell. The smaller, denser peaberries are thought to have a higher potency of flavor.

 Fully Washed coffees from Tanzania are put through a fermentation process, while Washed coffees are typically mechanically demucilaged. Fully Washed lots are typically depulped the same day they're harvested, then fermented in cement tanks for anywhere from 24–72 hours. They are then washed clean of mucilage and sorted through water channels before being spread on raised beds to dry, or dried in mechanical driers. Sometimes they are given a 8–12-hour post-washing soak before they are dried.

SPECS:

Country     Tanzania
Region     Kilimanjaro
Farm     Smallholder members
Variety     Bourbon, Blue Mountain, Kilimanjaro, and Luwiro
Proc. Method     Washed
Altitude     1200 - 1900 masl