Perc Coffee in Savannah, Georgia, is one of my all-time favorite roasters. They’ve returned with a couple of east African coffees and today I’m tasting their Rwanda Kibirizi Lot 2. The Kenya Kianderi AA I reviewed last week knocked my socks off, so let’s give this one a slurp!
Purchase this coffee directly for $16/12oz (use FREESHIP25 to get free shipping on all orders over $25!)
Perc Coffee Kenya Kianderi AA review
PERC COFFEE RWANDA KIBIRIZI LOT 2
Perc’s current selection from Rwanda is a fresh crop coffee harvested in 2016. It’s Red Bourbon variety grown around 1600-1700masl near Nyamagabe, Rwanda in the southwest part of the country. This is a washed coffee, as most from Rwanda are. Perc’s tasting notes read, “rhubarb + fig + caramel.” They say it is, “bright and tangy with notes of rhubarb, apricot and fig and an elegant sugary-sweet finish.” Perc recommends brewing on a V60 and their page for this coffee, linked above, includes instructions and a “recipe” to get the most out of this coffee.
I used my standard 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper with Kalita 185 filter. I used my Hanground grinder set on 3.5 and I am using Third Wave Water’s water treatment product with distilled water as the solvent. Third Wave Water brought out a ton of brightness in that Kenya!
The first flavor that hit my tongue from this Rwandan coffee was raisin and I continued to get hints of raisin (more like lighter, sweet golden raisins than the darker variety) throughout this cup. There is a good amount of soft citrus brightness in this coffee. There was both lemon and tangerine tanginess for me but also a good, solid base of sweetness to keep the coffee from getting too bright. I was picking up florals in the finish, which was a little dry on my palate, and the aftertaste had notes of baking spices and cocoa for me. Toward the middle of the sip there was a definite apricot, almost-peach-but-not-quite tone to the coffee that was both very sweet and also bright and almost tart, too, like a dried apricot. It was really delicious and that flavor opened up as the cup cooled. As the cup continued to cool I got great sips with that caramel desriptor mentioned by Perc! I wasn’t getting that at all but once it reached the right temperature it was a real caramel bomb (one of the best kinds of bombs, in my book)! The caramel became really apparent right between the end of the sip and the transition into that somewhat spicy aftertaste.
This is a really delicious cup and it represents why Rwanda holds such a great reputation in specialty coffee. This is a super sweet coffee with the perfect amount of acidity to keep it from being too heavy and dense. Ithas great body and pretty clean flavors and it has enough complexity to have me searching and pondering for all those little flavor notes. I really enjoyed this and I’ll bet it will be super good with my regular tap water, too, which tends to bring up the high notes less than Third Wave Water does. I see why the gang at Perc fell in love with this coffee!