The Barn Kenya Nguguini AB

Let’s start April off with a coffee from The Barn in Berlin. It feels like April Fool’s Day today, even though it’s the 2nd, because we have snow on the ground here in Kansas City and warm coffee is exactly what’s needed to get this week moving along! Slurp…

The Barn

Purchase this coffee directly for €13.50/250g ($16.65/8.8oz) or filter roast for same price here

Other reviews in this series: Colombia La Montaña | Rwanda Huye Mountain | Ethiopia Hunkute | Costa Rica La Isla | Brazil Fazenda Um

THE BARN KENYA NGUGUINI AB

It only took a few sips of a few coffees from The Barn to know they would rank very high in my list of favorite roasters. This Berlin, Germany roaster is probably most famous for not having WiFi or allowing baby strollers into their cafes, but getting past those superficial things that news outlets like to report on, The Barn has proven to me that they really know how to source and roast coffee at an exceptional level. This morning I’m taking a look at their Kenya Nguguini AB. My sample is their espresso roast and they are currently selling it as both the espresso roast as well as their filter roast.

This coffee is grown in an area of Kenya between Kirinyaga and Nyeri, two coffee-growing hotspots in that country. Famed coffee export company, D. Dorman, rated this as one of the 10 best Kenyan coffees of the year, coming in 5th place. This is SL28 and SL34 grown around 1650masl. The “AB” designation is the size of the beans, which are still sorted as such in Kenya. AA are the largest, following by AB. The Barn gives us tasting notes of “blueberry, bergamot, bold” for both the filter and espresso versions of this coffee. My samples from The Barn were around 35g, so dialing in for espresso was out of the question, even for their espresso roast. So, I’m using my standard pourover method of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water. I’m using a notNeutral Gino dripper with Kalita 185 filters and a Knock Aergrind for the hard work.

Opening the sample packet, I am greeted by a definite tomato fragrance and I got lots of tomato soup aroma from the brew liquid as I was brewing this coffee (which took about 3:30 not including the bloom). Even the aroma from the cup has hints of tomato soup, too, and I know that is a really weird descriptor for coffee, but it’s not totally uncommon in Kenyan coffees. This is a medium-bodied coffee that is both sweet and very bright right out of the gate. I’m getting a brown sugar and light caramel sweetness in the base that is immediately accompanied by an interesting acidity. Kenyan coffees are best known for their grapefruit-like citrus notes, but I’m not finding that in this particular coffee. There’s a lot of sweet lemon and some orange (bergamot, too, although not the obviously Earl Grey notes that some Ethiopian washed coffees can often carry). There’s something almost green apple-like in the acidity, too… a crisp freshness that leaves almost a cooling effect on my palate. For me, there is no blueberry in this cup, but I am getting a little floral berry note that I always associate with blackberry in the second half of the sip and finish. This coffee finishes a little dry and between the hints of bergamot and that dry finish, there is definitely a black tea vibe to this cup. I’m used to that with washed Ethiopian coffees but that’s another unusual feature for a Kenyan coffee, for me. For as much tomato/tomato soup as I was getting from the dry fragrance and aroma in this cup, there’s almost none of that in the actual flavor.

This is an interesting and delicious coffee. For me, it’s like a mashup of Kenyan and washed Ethiopian coffees. It has the “attitude” of a Kenyan coffee with a lot of the flavors of a washed Ethiopian. The florals, the sweet lemon, bergamot, blackberry, are all Ethiopian, to me, but the aggressiveness, clarity and boldness of the cup are distinctly Kenyan. This is a super easy drinker and once it cooled it really begged for big swigs and lots of them. My sample was gone before I knew it and left me wanting a lot more of this coffee!