Origin: Kenya
Cooperative: New Tekangu Farmers' Cooperative Society
Factory: Karogoto Factory
Producer: Approximately 1,800 small-scale farmers around the factory.
Region: Nyeri
Variety: SL-28, SL-34, Batian
Process: Fully washed
Altitude: 1708 m asl
Harvest: 2024 - 2025

Situated at 1,708 meters above sea level in Nyeri County, Kenya, the Karogoto Factory serves as the primary processing facility for the New Tekangu Farmers Cooperative. As the cooperative's largest producer, it processes cherries from approximately 1,800 smallholder farmers.
The name "Tekangu" is derived from the initials of three factories: Tegu, Karogoto, and Ngunguru. Taking advantage of the region's fertile clay loam soil, farmers cultivate varieties including SL28, SL34, Batian, and Ruiru 11. With favorable conditions—an average annual temperature of 20.5°C and approximately 1,400mm of rainfall—the coffee flowers bloom from February to April, with the main harvest occurring from October to January.
Ephrim, the current factory manager, oversees the entire process from cherry reception through final processing, ensuring consistent quality control. When we visited Kenya in 2023, he was managing the Ngunguru station. Among the many people we met while visiting various washing stations, his passion for coffee production and quality was exceptional.
His openness to introducing experimental drying equipment and actively incorporating production insights from other countries is uncommon in the industry. In fact, Karogoto's quality improved dramatically when Ephrim was assigned there eight years ago. The station gained recognition among coffee enthusiasts when a renowned Northern European roaster began sourcing from it annually.

Kenya has two harvest seasons: the main crop from October to December and the fly crop from May to July. We purchase exclusively from the main crop, which flowers in February and March, with coffee available for purchase from January through April of the following year.
Farmers hand-pick only fully ripe cherries and deliver them to the factory. Upon arrival, the cherries are spread on sheets in a sorting shed, where they're manually sorted according to the factory's standards to separate properly ripe cherries from underripe or overripe ones. Reception staff monitor the process to ensure sorting standards are maintained.
This station uses a fully washed processing method. Only selected, ripe cherries are fed into a pulper, which removes the skins and produces parchment coffee. At this stage, the parchment is covered in mucilage—a sticky layer composed of natural sugars and pectin—which significantly influences the coffee's sweetness, acidity, and overall flavor profile.
The mucilage-covered parchment is placed in fermentation tanks for 16 to 24 hours. No water is added during this dry fermentation, allowing the cherries' natural enzymes and environmental microorganisms to break down the mucilage. After fermentation, the parchment is transferred to another tank filled with clean water drawn from a nearby river, where it soaks for 16 to 18 hours.
The parchment is then graded as P1, P2, P3, P-Lite, and Pod, with P1 grade receiving an additional soaking treatment before drying.