Maliba (Ugandan) Coffee by River Coffee Roasting

This is close to our hearts as Jesse (owner of Lemon and Jinja) used to live in Uganda!

The team at Lemon and Jinja recommend it as a drip or filter.

Tropical fruit, bright orange and milk chocolate sweetness. This is a complex, juicy coffee from the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda, grown by the farming community of Maliba.

Tasting notes: Tropical, orange, milk chocolate

Our roast: River have roasted this coffee to a medium/medium light level, which brings out the tropical fruit and bright acidity while keeping a lovely sweetness. It works as espresso or filter, and it is great in milk based drinks too.

The story
Maliba sits at 1,600 metres above sea level, with many farmers growing coffee even higher up the slopes. Most farmers have just one to two acres, and coffee is their main cash crop. Agri Evolve set up a buying centre here so local growers have a reliable place to sell.

During harvest, ripe red cherries are picked daily and brought to the buying centre, which can handle 5 to 10 tonnes a day at the peak of the season. The cherries are weighed and checked for quality, and farmers are paid in cash on the spot. The cherries are floated to remove any lower quality fruit, then trucked to Agri Evolve's Coffee Station at Nyabirongo. There they are sun dried for up to three weeks before being hulled, graded and sorted, then bagged ready for export.

Maliba is a great example of the high quality, traditionally processed naturals the Rwenzori region is known for.

At a glance

• Producer: Community of Maliba
• Region: Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda
• Altitude: 1,600 m.a.s.l.
• Varietal: SL14 and SL28
• Process: Natural
• Export/Import: Agri Evolve (B Corp)
• Brew method: Espresso or filter