FARM: Intango Washing Station

LOCATION: Karongi District - Western Province, Rwanda

CULTIVARS: Arabica Bourbon: French Mission, Jackson, Mbirizi

COOP SIZE: 400 small holder farmers

ALTITUDE: 1,500 - 1,900 meters above sea level

EXPORTER: Roots Origins Inc.

IMPORTER: This Side Up Coffees

ROASTER: Special Roast

About intango

Intango (pronounced “Inango”) is a small washing station on the edge of Lake Kivu. Once part of a cooperative that won the 2014 Rwanda Cup of Excellence, it became run down as the cooperative dissolved. That is until our friend Gilbert Gatali took it over. Grown up in Canada but Rwandan by roots, Gilbert came back to his African roots as a coffee importer. He then continued to help hundreds of farmers improve their quality as manager of Rwanda's first farmer-owned specialty coffee export company. Finally, after 13 years of managing coffee quality indirectly, he and his best friend Gervais are fulfilling their dreams of running their own specialty coffee washing station. The washing station works with only 400 supplying farmers, but this gives Gilbert the oversight to make lasting impact for all of them.

what to taste for

Aroma: black berry, caramel, thick.

Body: round mouthfeel, pleasant.

Acidity: vibrant, citrus with a slight grapefruit like bitter.

Aftertaste: forest berries, deep sweet.

PROCESSING your coffee

All coffee is hand picked, disc pulped, wet fermented overnight, washed and soaked with mountain water, then sun dried on raised beds. The coffee is shade dried, then sun dried and consistently turned to achieve the lowest possible amount of defects.

ROASTING YOUR COFFEE

Special Roast uses a 22kg Probat UG22 roaster, that has been built in 1965. The roast time is 10 minutes. After the first crack, the coffee is roasted for a remainder of 25% of the time.

Relative PRICE BREAKDOWN

41%

Intango pays farmers for their cherries as p/kg price of green (milled) coffee. This price is often unknown to buyers. This Side Up pays a 50% premium that goes towards Intango’s environmental sustainability program.

33%

wet-processing costs and coop management fee + dry-milling costs and exporter fee.

4%

total shipping costs from Kigali, through customs and to our warehouse. We fill our containers with as much coffee as we can or hitchhike with other importers to keep these costs to a minimum.

17%

This Side Up compensation for spending time and resources bringing this relationship and coffee to life. Our work includes building relationships with origin partners in the field, finding markets for the coffees, linking farmers to rural banks and NGO partners, arranging the export and import channels, Q grading, sampling.

5%

Average financing cost we have to pay lenders - simply because we don’t have the money in the bank to buy such large amounts of coffee all at once. This ensures immediate payment to the farmers when the coffee leaves the farm or port.