FRIEDHATS - John Kinyanjui | Kenya - Washed - SL28, SL34

The famous Bob Ross utterance “Happy little accidents” lives rent free in my head. Not just because I myself am a happy little accident (a nugget my dad casually dropped on my 13th birthday, thanks for that), but because life is full of these excellent byproducts. Donut holes, buttermilk, molasses, marmite, Kenyan coffee. Well, ok, not Kenyan coffee exactly, but that signature Kenyan coffee taste seems to be a byproduct of solving a processing bottleneck.

Kenya is famous for its washed coffees, sometimes called double-washed, Kenya washed, or double fermented- this comes from an additional step in their washing process. Whereas standard washed coffee is depulped, fermented then dried, it’s important to note that the depulping & fermentation takes significantly less time than the drying phase, creating a bottleneck if there isn’t enough space for the drying to take place. This was a common issue in Kenya, where farmers and smallholders are compelled to funnel their work into mills, and these mills deal with a huge and sudden influx of coffee to be processed that often far outpaced the capacity of drying space. In working to find a solution to this, the double fermentation process became widely popular: after the first fermentation beans are washed again and introduced to fresh clean water to be stored safely while drying space becomes available. This second fermentation occurs in new, cooler water without the mucilage from the previous fermentation, meaning the nature of the ferment is slower and vastly different. It’s presumed that because of this differing fermentation, small amounts of acetic acid are absorbed, perceived in the final product as fruity, floral and bright. So this iconic flavor profile is a byproduct of the intersection of pragmatism and the gargantuan regulation of the coffee industry in Kenya, which we’ll get into another time.

That’s settled then- if the flavor profile of Kenyan coffee is an accident I can love, then maybe I too can be an accident someone can love.