Cameroon Oku Valley

Cameroon is on the West side of Africa which has almost no specialty coffee being grown. There's some robusta farms, and there are lots of other commodity crops like sugarcane.

But Cameroon has a mountain (Mt. Oku) with the altitude and soil appropriate for specialty coffee, and so on the slopes of Mt. Oku (the Oku Valley), a few arabica coffee farms exist. This one also grows oranges and bananas, and those trees shade the coffee, and the farmer is part of the Caplami Cooperative.

I like it a bit shy of 2nd cracks. Roast it like a Costa Rica and land it half way between the end of the first cracks and beginning of 2nd cracks. That's 409 degree bean temperature on our roaster. This is where we got some hints of blackberry and floral notes, caramel sweetness, and slight tobacco. All in all it's a fairly normal tasting coffee, but it's better than you would think for an origin not known for specialty coffee. Roasting it right to the verge of the beginning of 2nd cracks makes it a little bit boring. It's fine, but not memorable in any way. If you take it into the 2nd cracks it picks up a smoky and mineral note that reminds me of a Zimbabwe coffee -- pretty decent complexity and sweetness at this roast level.

I don't have a good source for Cameroon beans so this is likely a one-time chance to play around with a rarely seen origin.

This is the September 2021 USA arrival.