Rwanda Milles Collines Peaberry - 1lb Bag

Origin and Farm Notes

This coffee lot incorporates peaberry selections from several coffee washing stations in Rwanda's southern and western provinces. Peaberries are considered an abnormality, however they occur in small amounts on every tree. It's when only one of the two coffee seeds inside a coffee cherry germinates, and proceeds to mature inside the cherry as a small, rounded seed. When we buy peaberry lots from a single farmer in say, Guatemala, the final bag count is usually only a couple bags due to the small farm sizes. But in Rwanda, we buy from many cooperative stations that collect coffee from hundreds to thousands of cooperative members, who between them, produce considerably higher volume of this small bean rarity. In this case, we are selling two lots that tasted identical through through this review for a total of 65 bags (lots "A" and "B"). "Milles Collines", as Rwanda is commonly referred to, French meaning "the land of 1000 hills". The cooperatives and washing stations who contributed to this blend are situated in the villages at the tops of some of these "collines", affording access to the higher elevation coffees, and offering ease of delivery for these coffee farm members.

One thing to note is that the beans are very small, and I don't recommend roasting this particular peaberry in a Behmor. I haven't roasted a batch myself, but I did give this coffee the "shake test" in the grid drum to see if any beans would slip through the screen. With 100g in the grid drum, 4-5 beans slipped through the screen without much effort. I think most of the coffee will remain inside, but not all of it. See photo for the comparison with a typical 15+ screen Guatemalan coffee.