After having their amazing Ethiopia Chuchu, I am back with another coffee from Georgia’s Ubora Coffee Roasters. Let’s jump right into this cup!
Purchase this coffee directly for $15/12oz
Other reviews in this series: Ethiopia Chuchu
UBORA COFFEE ROASTERS RWANDA ABAKUNDAKAWA
Ubora Coffee Roasters are a veteran-owned (two of the owners appear to still be active US Navy) coffee roasting company that I learned about recently thanks to my pal, Darwin Pavon, of Theodore’s Coffee Roasters and Datgen Roasters. Darwin has been helping the Ubora crew get up and running with their roasting machine and Theodore’s has been contract-roasting Ubora’s coffee in the meantime. Ubora are located near Augusta, Georgia and I don’t think they have a cafe, but looking at their Instagram I did see they have a nice trailer/truck that even offers cold brew and nitro coffee.
I was really impressed with Ubora’s Chuchu from Ethiopia (link to the review toward the top of the page) and so I’m excited to be checking out this morning’s coffee from Rwanda, too. This morning’s coffee is Ubora’s Abakundakawa (which really does roll off the tongue beautifully when you work it out!), which evidently translates to “people who love coffee ” from Kinyarwanda. This coffee comes from a group of women who have organized as the Hingakawa Women’s Association. They are using their profits to benefit members in ways like purchasing a communal farm as well as livestock for members.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find specific details that I’m confident saying belong to this coffee, as I saw references to other women’s associations and this coffee, too. Abakundakawa has won Rwanda’s prestigious Cup of Excellent award, but I’m not sure this particular coffee and producer won that, so I don’t want to share inaccurate info with you. It appears that whoever is giving this name to their coffee, though, take special care in sorting and washing it! Ubora gives us tasting notes of, “plum, brown sugar, black tea and clove” for this coffee.
I’m 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 use a Knock Aergrind grinder.
This is a medium-bodied coffee that I found to have a nice, juicy presence on my palate that encouraged more and bigger sips. On my palate, this coffee felt a lot like grapefruit juice, but it wasn’t grapefruity in any other way. I get honey sweetness up front in the initial sip with a bright fruitiness that reminded me both of peach and white grape juice. It was hard for me to get past the thought that I felt like I was drinking grapefruit juice, even though I wasn’t finding particularly grapefruit flavors! LOL Actually, now that I am writing that, I do get some complex citrus acidity in the back end of the sip that has a bit of grapefruit, lemon and orange in it for me.
The sweetness of the cup really says “grape” to me and I get little flashes of peach, or perhaps more apricot, throughout the sip. There are a lot of fruits floating around in the mix, but all of them come with a lot of sweetness. I get honey notes as well as light brown sugar in the low end of this coffee, too. This coffee finishes sweet but does have some black tea flavors and bitterness in the aftertaste. Between sips my palate has a lot of black tea flavors (but without the usual astringency or feeling of dryness on my palate that I usually associate with tea notes in coffee) and a bitterness that climbs at the end of the sip and then recedes as the aftertaste fades.
This is a really complex coffee… there are multiple levels of sweetness, acidity, fruit notes, and even a lot going on in the finish and aftertaste. Yet, somehow all of these flavors work well together and I don’t find anything clashing or competing with one another. That juicy mouthfeel really makes me want to keep sipping and helps this coffee keep its drinkability. This is an outstanding example of another African coffee and while I only had two offerings from Ubora, I certainly hope they aren’t the last. I am highly impressed by both this Abakundakawa and their Chuchu from Ethiopia. I know Theodore’s roasted both of them, but considering Ubora will (or, by now, probably IS) using the same roasters and profiles, there should be no difference in the quality and flavors of these coffees. Killer!