Value Bag – Uganda Bukyabo region

More about the farm...

So Why we came up with  Value Line?

Well  – will tell you a secret no one seems to be talking about – Discounted green coffee. Truth is – there is plenty of discounted specialty coffee out there, and no one is telling you this. So – we came up with idea, source and find best bang for the buck discounted green coffee with best value tag, roast best way we can – and pass savings on to you. This way – you get a chance to try, unique highly graded  lots, experimental processing, and regions you perhaps might not try normally. This would mean we will change lots in future, and it might not be necessarily cheapest offering we have – it will mean it will have best value we have found on market.

So – is there anything wrong with it, and why coffee Is discounted in first place? No there is nothing wrong with it , and I will try to explain why in short.

Coffee roasters would mainly buy their green coffee from importers, who then would work directly with farmers and take care of all the boring stuff. Importers would borrow substantial amount of money to pay fair price to farmer in advance, so farmers are never missing out on discounted coffee. Farers then would produce the crop and once its ready – importers would take care of logistics and ship green beans to destination country. Then -they need to find warehousing to keep all this coffee, warehousing storage is usually contracted for length of 1 year. It is important to note that warehousing, insurance and finance costs continue to accumulate for every day that each bag of coffee remains in storage until it is sold, delivered, invoiced and paid for. Coffee also is mainly traded in US dollars, so any currency fluctuations would affect coffee price, as well as any world events. Now – if importers have bought too little , they would sell out, on other hand if they had bought too much, they will start struggling to shift coffee. Particularly if it comes close to 1 year limit, which after money would have to be paid back to banks, and warehousing extended. With new crops already on the way – the only thing to do is discount green coffee giving better chance to shift & break even on costs, taking hit on themselves. That’s main reasons for discounting coffee in short, and here is bit more about the coffee itself:

The Coffee Gardens was established in 2017 with the goal of producing incredible specialty coffee in an ethical way, offering a transparent and direct link between coffee farmers and coffee consumers. The following information on our 2021/22 micro and nano-lots has been produced to enable our customers and consumers to better understand the coffee they are buying, the story behind it, and the incredible farmers who grow it. Micro-lots were assembled by combining day-lots (coffee processed on the same day) with similar taste profiles. Therefore, a single farmer may contribute to multiple micro-lots.

The Coffee Gardens have been working with the farmers who produced this micro-lot for the past five years. They know each and every farming family as they live on the mountain about 600 metres above thier washing station. This micro-lot is named after the village Zebigi, where many of the farmers live. Last year, with the support of roasters, we trained these farmers on growing coffee amongst shade trees, good agricultural practices, and of course, better harvesting techniques. In July, we distributed over 8,300 shade, fruit and fast growing tree seedlings. This year, training is continuing and TCG are building toilet blocks for the three primary schools in the area.

Farmers have coffee gardens of different sizes and so supply different amounts of coffee. Mr Woniala Moses from Zebigi was one of the biggest contributors to this micro-lot with 349 KG of red ripe coffee cherries. Within hours of being picked, coffee cherries are carried down to our station in 50 kg bags by “runners” – a team of over 160 women and men employed from the local community. This coffee is pulped before undergoing our signature fermentation method involving a pre-wash, a long soak in cold mountain spring water, and then a gentle long fermentation lasting forty hours before a final wash. This coffee is meticulously sorted at 12 different stages before export.