Each week Alterra Coffee Roasters (Milwaukee, WI) offers a special Coffee/Espresso by the pound or cup, this week they are presenting beans from their “Featured Farm Series”, Burundi Kayanza Nemba.

Alterra’s Featured Farm Series was created as a way to recognize the efforts of the farmers that work hard to produce the best coffees and do what we love to do the most – connect people who want to drink great coffees with the farmers who produce them.

This is their first ever offering from the Republic of Burundi. The small landlocked country (about 1/6 the size of Wisconsin) sits right in the heart of the Great Lakes region of Africa bordering Rwanda, Tanzania, and Lake Tanganyika — a huge lake, larger in area than Burundi itself. Coffee is the country’s largest export and 90% of its population relies on farming so it comes as no surprise that the people of Burundi have a talent for growing and harvesting coffee. Coffee exports are a major source of income for Burundi, and have been helpful in rebuilding the country following a 12-year civil war, which ended in only 2005. This coffee is grown in the Kayanza region in northern Burundi in the locality of Nemba.

Burundi Kayanza Nemba is a washed coffee comprised of Bourbon variety as well as lesser-known Jackson and Mibirizi varieties, which are Bourbon cultivars native to Africa. Burundi has a very high average elevation (over 1,700masl), and has a great supply of heirloom varieties left by the Belgians from the early 20th century.

Alterra’s excited to share this coffee with you and hope you enjoy its vibrant, winy acidity, flavors of plum and dried mission fig and creamy, sweet body. As an espresso, the densely layered flavors are wound around a tight core of sweetness and heavy body.