Ki Roasters is back this morning with a fresh AA from Kenya. I could write more for an introduction, but why bother when there’s coffee to drink?!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17/12oz
Other reviews in this series: Ethiopia Guji Natural
KI ROASTERS KENYA AA WASHED
Ki Roasters founder, Bert Davis, remarkably just started roasting coffee around two years ago and started his company in earnest in 2017 using a tiny Huky 500 roaster (although my recon shows he has access to a larger production roaster, which is good news because he surely needs the extra capacity!). I’ve found Bert’s coffees to be sweet and balanced every time and that’s a good thing! Bert is located in Littleton, CO (suburbs of Denver) and his coffee roasting company is named from the Greek word, “chay,” meaning “revive” or “awaken.” It’s an appropriate name for this ritual many people all over the world use to help wake up and get moving in the morning!
This morning’s coffee from Ki Roasters is their washed Kenya AA. This coffee comes from a co-op of growers, like most Kenyan coffee, that in this case is located in Embu County. Embu is at the base of Mount Kenya and east of Nyeri, where a lot of coffee is also grown. This lot contains SL28, SL34, Ruiru and Batian varieties, the classics of Kenya, and Bert gives us tasting notes of, “Floral, citrus, berry and vanilla spice.” I am using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water in a notNeutral Gino dripper. I’m using a Knock Aergrind grinder and my brew time for this coffee, not including a 30 second bloom, was around 3:20. Remarkably, I’ve only gotten to review about 3-4 Kenyan coffees since last summer, so I’m greatly looking forward to this!
My first couple sips tell me this is a little deeper and darker than the super bright citrus bombs that Kenya is often known for, but my experience with Kenyan coffee is also that they tend to change a lot as they cool down. I’d call this a medium-heavy to heavy-bodied coffee… it has a density and weight to it that really lies over my palate like a blanket. As this cup cools down it gets better and better, so this is one worth waiting for (well, they all are, really… hot coffee is the enemy of flavor!). The “classic” Kenyan acidity profile is grapefruit and this one has plenty of pink grapefruit in the high notes. It seems associated with a lot of fruit sweetness, too, more like grapefruit juice with a healthy heap of sugar in it than the fruit itself. It’s juicy, dense and really delicious in this coffee. I’m picking up some blackberry in this coffee, too, which I also associate with berry flavors with florals. I’m not getting a ton of florality out of this coffee, but there are hints and along with that dark berry jam note, it reads as blackberry for me. There’s a lot of sweetness to this cup that I think contributes to the heavy body, and, like I said, it’s almost like drinking a sugary fruit juice. At the same time, however, the fruit-forwardness of this coffee lends quite a bit of balance to the cup overall, too, so it’s shy of being cloying or overly sweet.
This is a really nice cup of coffee. It has the fruitiness and citrus I associate with Kenyans, but that blackberry and the dense sweetness give it a “darker” presence on my palate, too. It’s super drinkable, very nicely balanced and a really nice reminder of just how fantastic Kenyan coffees can be. Another A+ job from Bert and Ki Roasters. YUM!!!