Tanzania AA Karatu Estate

This estate is north of Kilamanjaro in the Arusha region. What caught our attention on this one, is the varietal of coffee that they are growing. It's a variety called Kent which we usually only see from India.  As a result, this coffee does taste distinct from other Tanzanian beans we've been sampling.

I still roast it fairly light like any other Tanzania or Kenya. Maybe 40 seconds past the end of the first cracks, speeding through the middle of the roast between 300 degrees up to the first cracks so that it accentuates its acidity. Keeping the roast fairly short so it doesn't bake out the complexity. But instead of sweetness, we are tasting more chocolate, with hints of banana and plum. Even almost has a Yemen-like bread/grains taste to it, which is always something that gets me excited.  I've also noticed that it behaves differently in medium to dark roasts, getting more chocolatey as you go, at the expense of thinner body.

The beans were sorted out so it's only the biggest AA sized beans in this lot.

US Arrival January 2020