Three lots.
One cooperative.
Documented at every step.

Quality begins at the branch. A specialty cup is impossible from underripe fruit.

At Kavugangoma, smallholder farmers walk their plots multiple times per harvest season — picking only the deep-red, fully ripe cherries and leaving the green and overripe behind for later passes. Selective picking takes longer than strip-harvesting and costs more, but it is the single most important quality decision a farmer makes. A lot picked with discipline carries that discipline through every subsequent step.

Cherries arrive at the washing station within hours of being picked. Each delivery is weighed, sorted, and floated — underripe and damaged fruit floats to the surface and is removed before any further processing begins. By the end of cherry intake, what reaches the depulper is already a tighter, more uniform population than what left the tree.

Fermentation is the most chemically active stage of processing. It is also the easiest to ruin.

For washed lots, the cherry is pulped — its outer skin removed mechanically — leaving the bean coated in a sticky mucilage layer. The pulped beans are transferred to fermentation tanks where naturally present microbes break that mucilage down. Done well, fermentation removes the mucilage cleanly and contributes brightness and clarity to the cup. Done poorly — too long, too warm, uneven aeration — it introduces phenolic taints, vinegar notes, or muted sweetness that no roast can fix.

Kavugangoma's tanks are monitored throughout the fermentation window. Operators check pH, ambient temperature, and the physical feel of the parchment-coated bean — when the mucilage no longer slips between the fingers, fermentation is complete. The bean is then washed under clean water in graded channels and moved to the drying tables.

If fermentation builds the flavour, drying preserves it. A rushed dry is a quiet defect that surfaces on the cupping table six months later.

Washed parchment dries on raised beds for 14–21 days, turned by hand multiple times daily to ensure even moisture release. The cooperative monitors moisture content throughout the drying window — a rushed dry can introduce defects that surface on the cupping table six months later, while an over-dried bean loses aromatic complexity.

The drying target is a green-bean moisture content of 10.5–11.5%. Above that range, the bean is unstable for export and risks mould during shipping. Below it, the bean dries out and loses aromatic complexity. The window is narrow. At altitude, with cooler nights and lower humidity, that window is achievable; at lower elevations it is significantly harder to hit consistently.

Milling is where a lot becomes a lot. Before this stage it is parchment from a station. After it, it is a defined commercial offering.

Dried parchment moves to the dry mill, where the parchment hull is removed and the green bean is exposed for the first time. The beans then run through a sequence of sorting machines: density tables remove low-density beans, screen graders separate by size, and optical or hand sorting removes any final defects — black beans, broken material, foreign matter.

Burundi's grading system separates lots by screen size and density. Reserve 15+ designates FW 15+ Premium beans of screen 15 or above (sieve mesh ~6mm). Estate TT designates FW 15+ Commercial beans of screen 14–15. These are not arbitrary classifications: the larger and denser the bean, the more uniformly it absorbs heat during roasting, which translates directly into cup consistency.

A lot can survive every prior stage and still be ruined by the journey. Specialty coffee fails most often in transit, not at origin.

Before export, every lot is cupped one final time at the dry mill. Cupping data — SCA score, sensory descriptors, defect notes — is recorded against the lot identifier. We require this documentation before any lot is offered to a buyer; nothing leaves Kavugangoma without a current score sheet attached.

Bagging is done into GrainPro liners inside jute bags. The hermetic GrainPro layer protects the green bean from humidity fluctuations and oxidation during the sea voyage, which can otherwise degrade the cup by the time it reaches a roastery. From Bujumbura, lots transit through Dar es Salaam or Mombasa, then onward to Jebel Ali or Cape Town. Total journey time: typically four to eight weeks.