Uganda Rwenzori Mountains Honey Process

Importer Notes | Geographically, the Rwenzori mountains are a colossal anomaly to the rest of Uganda’s landscape. They explode steeply from the surrounding lowlands in a dense, craggy outpouring of mineral rock, less than 20 miles across but including Africa’s second highest peak at over 5,000 meters (the peak, Mt. Stanley, is the highest non-volcanic, non-tectonic mountain on Earth). As you can imagine, the way up includes an incredible range of microclimates, everything from tropical rainforests to arid loamy hillsides, alpine meadows, and glacial fields. Coffee in this area reaches elevations as high or higher than those on Mt. Elgon, in Uganda’s East, but it has always been less established and of much lower reputation. Because of this the Rwenzori mountains represent one of the highest-potential but least-realized regions in Africa’s specialty coffee. There are a number of specialty groups working to establish themselves here, with varying goals and levels of success.  

Uganda as a whole just doesn’t have widespread highland territories like nearby Kenya or Ethiopia. Nearly the entire country is low, tropical, and consistently warm, save for only three dramatic and concentrated exceptions: Mt. Elgon in the East, the Kigezi highlands in the southwest corner, and the Rwenzori Mountains in the West. The country is otherwise well suited for Coffea canephora (robusta), which grows wild here and is commercially critical as well: 80% of Uganda’s almost 9 million annual exportable bags are robusta. If you’ve tasted great coffee from Uganda (and many have not), chances are it came from one of only a handful of producer groups, and chances are also that they were founded in the past 10 years. Arabica, and especially great tasting arabica, is still incredibly scarce. 

This small lot of coffee was processed as a traditional, low intervention honey, albeit a very meticulous one. Mountain Harvest recruits farmers for specific processing projects, typically by community or by harvest day. In this case, 600 farmers from two communities contributed cherry over a short period of time. Fresh cherry was delivered each picking day, sorted for ripeness and consistency and immediately depulped. Once depulped, the parchment and its full mucilage was moved to a full-sun section of raised screen beds to dry for 2-3 days, allowing a rapid extraction of moisture from the mucilage and seed while limiting the residual fermentation. After this first drying stage the parchment was moved to a different set of beds in full shade, where it was carefully rotated over many days until the moisture content reached 15%. From this stage, the parchment was moved back into full sun to achieve the final 11% moisture content, and then finally to a temperature-controlled warehouse for long-term curing.