If you’ve been following City Boy’s videos or you’ve subscribed to Coffee World Tour for a while, you may know that while Ethiopia frequently lays claim to coffee, Uganda was also part of the area where coffee originated. Given that, you might expect to hear about Ugandan coffee more than we do. But about 80% of the coffee coming out of Uganda is commodity grade robusta. The specialty coffee world tends to look at robusta (cafe _____) as inferior coffee. And it’s the specialty world that usually talks about coffee origin.
City Boy Coffee is not convinced that robusta is an inferior coffee. We’ve yet to try one that we feel is specialty quality, but we feel that this is a bit of a perpetual cycle. Robusta is seen as commodity coffee. So, there’s not much incentive for farmers to treat it with the same care that they do arabica. It would be a massive waste of money unless there was a market. But robusta is an interesting plant. It’s heartier and can grow at higher temperatures in lower altitudes. This makes it seem more attractive as climate change slowly reshapes coffee growing regions. It’s also a cross-pollinating species, where arabica is polypoidal (for now, read very difficult to pollinate.) Robusta can evolve and adapt more easily. Uganda is also full of huge diversity of wild robusta that’s still not been fully explored by scientists. As time moves forward, we are hopeful that the world will discover really tasty robustas.
For now, we’re highlighting the growing specialty market in Uganda. Though, small, it’s growing quickly. Ugandans classify arabica as with WUGAR (Washed Ugandan Arabica) or DRUGAR (Dried Ugandan Arabica). Growers in the East and West have made it their goal to elevating the world’s opinion of these coffees by picking only the best coffee cherries and improving their processing techniques, and it’s working.
This month’s coffee is from the Gamatui Community in eastern Uganda, and grown in the volcanic soil surrounding Mount Elgon. It was processed at Sipi Falls Mill, which is named after a local waterfall. It’s a DRUGAR and was regularly raked on raised drying bed to ensure it dried evenly. The dried coffee cherry definitely left a mark on the flavor. You may taste slight winey notes which are more apparent in the coffee’s smell. We also tasted chocolate covered strawberries, banana spice cake, and sugar in the raw, almost as if there are flecks of it in the coffee which result in little flavor bursts. Typically we have extra bags available to sell but as our service is growing, we only had enough of this coffee for our subscribers. We’ve still got some got two other coffees available this month: one from Tanzania and one from Kenya.
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Our single-origin coffees are available to our Coffee World Tour subscribers first. We then sell a small amount to those who may wish to try an origin without subscribing through our Featured Coffee page.
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Flavor profile
rich and luscious
chocolate covered strawberry, spiced banana cake, sugar in the raw
Roast
medium-dark
Process
natural
Altitude
1800-2000 meters
Varietal/Cultivar
SL-34, SL-14, Bourbon
Cup Score: 87
Producer
Gamatui Community, Kapchorwa, Mt. Elgan
Relationship Established: 2021
Country
Uganda
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