Tag: building a coffee washing station

How Long Miles ensures coffee quality, from farm to cup

Written by Robyn-Leigh van Laren in collaboration with ROEST Coffee

Every step that coffee takes in the process from seed to cup impacts its quality. Ensuring coffee quality at every touch point has been a steep learning curve for the Long Miles Coffee team, and is something they are continuously learning to improve with every coffee harvest that comes to pass.

“Could we actually produce specialty coffee in Burundi?“

The Carlson family at Bukeye Washing Station.

When Long Miles’ co-founders, Ben and Kristy Carlson, moved to Burundi in 2011, they quickly realized that the most central place to see transformative change in the lives of coffee farmers and the quality of their coffee was at the washing station. In early 2013, the Carlsons built Bukeye, the first Long Miles Washing Station, with the underlying goal of answering the question, “Could we actually produce specialty coffee in Burundi?”

That same year, Lauren Kagori (née Rosenberg), a PhD candidate from South Africa, joined the Long Miles Team as their first Farmer Relations Officer. Kagori’s role was to understand coffee farmers’ relationship to the washing station. As they began to build trust and work with the coffee farming communities around the washing station, it became clear to Kagori that farmers’ greatest challenge to coffee quality was the lack of access to inputs: fertilizer, lime, mulch, and to some degree access to loans to pay laborers to work on their farms.

“You don’t just engage with farmers a month or two before harvest. It’s a year-round effort.”

Lauren Kagori, Long Miles Coffee’s first Farmer Relations Officer.

By the end of their first harvest, Long Miles produced only eighty bags of coffee- just a quarter of a container. Needless to say, the coffee didn’t taste very good that year and many roasters rejected the lots upon arrival in the United States. “We learned that you don’t just engage with farmers a month or two before harvest; it’s a year-round effort”, Kagori explains.

This was a turning point for Long Miles. They had built a washing station, invested in a community of smallholder coffee growers, and grown a team of people. But there was an obvious limit to the return on their investment if they didn’t invest in bottom lines that went beyond profitability.

Improving Coffee Quality on the Farm

The Long Miles team came up with all sorts of innovative ideas to help guide farmers on how to improve their coffee’s quality. The first set of interns spent hours perusing local paint stores for the exact shade of red that resembled a ripened coffee cherry. The idea was to paint the bases of woven baskets that farmers generally use to collect hand-picked coffee cherries. It quickly went from baskets to dipping small wooden chips in the same red paint that farmers could easily slip in and out of their pockets to compare their ripening cherries against. Back at the washing station, a borehole was drilled so that their team could start processing coffee with clean groundwater instead of water from a nearby river.

Around that time, another challenge was rising, both at the farm level and on the cupping table: the Potato Taste Defect. It took a trip to visit an established coffee producer in Rwanda and interviews with Long Miles’ partner roasters to realize that Potato Taste Defect was a real issue- not just in Burundi, but in neighboring coffee-growing countries too. That’s how the Long Miles Coffee Scouts came to be.

Led by Epaphras Ndikumana, Social and Environmental Impact Leader at Long Miles, the Coffee Scouts guide partner farmers through the cherry picking process on their farms while also scouting for and removing any antestia bugs (the insect linked to the Potato Taste Defect). The Coffee Scouts also encourage farmers to practice floating cherries at home and then again at the washing stations. Standing side-by-side with farmers at the washing stations, the Scouts help to hand-sort their cherries for ripeness and visible defects. Back on the farm, they distribute indigenous and shade trees to partner coffee farmers, encouraging them to plant green manures to improve soil health, mitigate climate change and the productivity of their coffee trees. The Coffee Scouts have been pivotal in improving the quality of Burundi coffee, and the Potato Taste Defect has since become increasingly less common on our cupping tables.

“The activities of our social projects help partner coffee farmers to improve their agricultural practices which increases the productivity and quality of their coffee in the long run”, Ndikumana says. He has done extensive research on how to improve the productivity of Burundian farmers’ coffee trees and soil health, initiating programs like the PIP approach (translated from French as ‘Integrated Farm Plans’) and Farmer Field Schools within the farming communities that Long Miles works with in Burundi.

Long Miles’ Coffee and Quality Production Manager, Seth Nduwayo, adds to this by explaining that, “Our protocols, standards and communication are the most powerful tools that help us to produce quality coffee in a systemized way. We don’t only make efforts to perform well but try to make sure we perform more consistently while also aiming to improve our performance.” Ensuring coffee quality quietly continues long after harvest has ended at the dry mill. Nduwayo and the Long Miles team spend weeks at a time, following their coffee through innumerable quality steps at the mill: from hulling to grading, density sorting, handsorting, weighing, and eventually loading containers for export.

Green grading and sample roasting

On the other side of the world, David Stallings, head of Roaster and Importer Relations, ensures that coffee goes through meticulous quality steps once it reaches the Long Miles Coffee Lab in North America. He starts by measuring the water activity, performing a moisture and UV analysis of the coffee weighing and then roasting each sample using our ROEST. All the relevant physical data about each sample is documented before the process is repeated over and over again before samples are sent to their roasting partners across the globe.

Photo by Julianna Stallings

During coffee season, Stallings typically processes and on ROEST around 120 samples a week:

“The ROEST sample roaster may be the most perfect small-scale machine yet designed to explore the many different aspects of coffee roasting that I learned about through various roasting systems. The capability to develop profiles based on different parameters and the machine’s ability to develop coffee remarkably evenly, coupled with its ease of use and maintenance, make it an essential tool in my professional life.”

Click below to read more about how David Stallings developed the Long Miles ROEST profiles.

Photo by Julianna Stallings

Coffee Quality is about People.

It would be remiss not to acknowledge that there is countless research, processes, and tools, like the ROEST sample roaster, used at every touchpoint along coffee’s journey, but ensuring the quality of Long Miles’ coffee really comes down to people. Each coffee farming family that Long Miles works with. By continuing to listen to their thoughts and understand their challenges and needs, they continue to put steps in place to improve the quality of their coffee. The team of Coffee Scouts, working tirelessly throughout the year guiding partner farmers on best agricultural practices. It’s every member of the Long Miles team, investing in the long-term impact of smallholder coffee farmers in East Africa and the coffee they produce.

All this before any coffee reaches your cup.

August 4, 2021
The challenge of water at Ninga Washing Station

In Burundi, a washing station (or wet mill) is a communal space. It doesn’t just belong to those who build, own or manage it, and it’s not just a place for coffee farmers to deliver their coffee cherries to. A washing station is a sign of development within a community; a landmark where neighbors can gather, use it as a meeting place, find jobs, and often collect water.

“Seeing a washing station gives us hope. Before there was nothing, no building – it was only a hill. Now, there’s a washing station and mzungus are buying coffee. We continue seeing change and new building, and it gives us hope that the future will be good for the community.”

– Lucien, a partner coffee farmer from Camizi hill.

There are so many things to take into consideration when building a washing station. Does the area have a reputation for growing coffee? Is there a need for it? Is there suitable land available? What impact will its existence have on the environment? Will it be profitable? More, but not most importantly, is there an available water source?

Coffee simply cannot exist without water. Not only is water important for the growth and development of a coffee seed and plant, it’s necessary for processing coffee. The quality steps of floating and rinsing coffee cherries to pulping, grading, fermenting, and soaking parchment coffee wouldn’t be possible without an abundance of water. Of course, the importance of water is another conversation when it comes to cupping and brewing coffee.

Getting clean water in large quantities to the Long Miles Washing Stations has been a challenge for us over the years. When Heza opened back in 2014, we were sourcing water from two catchment areas on Gitwe hill. We shared a water source with the communities living around the washing station, but struggled with frequently broken pipes causing an insufficient supply of water to flow to Heza. We tried everything from fixing the pipes to recycling the water before finding a new water source four kilometers away, and pumping water from there to the station.

Umuhini mushasha, utera amababa.

“A new handle leaves you with some pain in your hand.”

– Raphael Kayembe, Managing Director of Long Miles in Burundi.

This Kirundi phrase has stuck with us because it seems to aptly describe the blistering and bruising it took our team to get Ninga, our new washing station, fully operational in time for the season opener this year.

In 2019, after purchasing the land where Ninga Washing Station would eventually stand, we worked with consultants to dig a well and install a hand-pump to access clean water. With our water source in place, we turned our focus to the build out of the station. It was only when it came to installing and connecting our McKinnon depulper to the water pipes that we realized the well wasn’t deep enough to access clean groundwater at the quantity and quality that we needed. Although community members had been collecting water for washing clothes from the pump since the day it was installed, it wasn’t suitable for cooking or drinking, let alone processing coffee.

We tried adapting the initial drilling, installing a new pump, and making tweaks to improve the water’s quality. The original pump was supposed to produce 3m³ of clean water per hour but through the redevelopment we found that it was only producing 1m³ of unclean water per hour. At 40m deep, the pump was still getting blocked with mud. Even after disassembling and cleaning it, the water that flowed from the pump was littered with pebbles and sand.

With the coffee trees starting to ripen and farmers anxious about having to deliver their harvest elsewhere, we couldn’t delay the opening of Ninga any longer. Without a fully operational washing station at this point, we made the call to start collecting coffee cherries from partner farmers and processed our first sun-dried Natural micro-lots of the season.

Behind the scenes, we continued exploring every alternative water source in the areas surrounding Ninga Washing Station for over a month. The sources that we could find were too far away to connect to (some fifteen kilometres from the washing station), had a low outflow of water or were already at capacity. After a lot of consideration, we bit the bullet and contracted a new consultant to perform a new drilling. It was our last hope.

Following a week of drilling, we found that clean groundwater was flowing at 65m deep. Without really realizing it, the doubt that we could get this fixed in time had been niggling away in our mind and we had been holding our breath for weeks. It was the sight of clean, flowing water that finally allowed the team to collectively let out a sigh of relief. With the hardest part behind us, we were fortunate enough to find all the additional parts in the country: the drill, electric pump, and pipes.

Not only have we been able to produce Fully Washed and Naturally processed coffees at Ninga Washing Station this season, but the tap has been opened to the neighboring communities once again for water collection. We’re especially excited about the anaerobically fermented micro-lots that we’ve processed using our new Jack Bins. Despite the challenge of water this harvest season, the quality of our Ninga coffees is looking like our best year yet!

Have you got questions about our current (2021) crop of Burundi coffee? Please get in touch with David Stallings, head of Roaster and Importer Relations at Long Miles Coffee.

July 9, 2021
What does building Ninga Washing Station mean for the future of coffee on Ninga hill?

“To have a washing station at Ninga is like a country that fought for independence, and got it. I will always celebrate this victory. No one will take it from us.”

We have been thinking about building a coffee washing station on Ninga hill for years. It’s been on our minds ever since we opened the doors of Bukeye, the first washing station that we built, for our inaugural coffee harvest in Burundi. We wrote about this not so long ago. Looking back, it has taken us close to seven years to make Ninga Washing Station happen.

Ninga hill is seated in the Butaganzwa Commune, an incredibly competitive and politically-charged area to work in. During those early years of producing coffee, we found that coffee farmers from Ninga and its surrounding sub-hills were streaming into our Bukeye Washing Station, walking more than fifteen kilometres (a journey that can take up to three hours by foot) to deliver their cherries. After speaking with some of these farmers and visiting their coffee farms, our team soon realized that they were producing quality coffee but didn’t want to deliver their cherries to other nearby washing stations because they felt like they couldn’t trust them with their coffee. Corruption, unbalanced scales, mistreatment of the coffee farming community, and delayed payments for coffee delivery broke farmers’ trust with other washing stations that over-promised and under-delivered.

“Times are not the same. I still remember when I was imprisoned because I refused to stop delivering my own coffee at Bukeye Washing Station. There was a strong hope of having a washing station at home. One night, during that time, I sat in my house thinking about the future of my coffee, but I couldn’t see it.”
– Tharcisse from Ninga hill in Burundi.

Hearing a similar, disheartening account from people on Ninga hill over and over again, it was clear to our team that something needed to change.

2017

That opportunity presented itself to us near the end of 2017, when we were able to buy a piece of land seated at 1900masl on Ninga hill that was flanked by the Nkokoma River.

2018

We applied to the National Coffee Board at the beginning of the year for authorization to start construction of the washing station. It took ten months for the board to set up a “technical commission” to check that the land had everything it needed. Does it really belong to Long Miles? Check. Is there a fair distance between where our washing station will go and other washing stations in the area? Check. Would coffee farmers in the area find it valuable to have another washing station here? Check. Would processing coffee here have any negative implications on the environment? Check. Will the washing station’s activities be profitable? Check.

2019

In October, more than a year after the technical commission had been set up, we were finally able to sign off all of the necessary paperwork and got permission to start the build of Ninga Washing Station. However, the country’s coffee sector was going through major shifts at the time. The restructuring of Burundi’s National Coffee Board coupled with rumblings of the government nationalizing the coffee sector caused a number of delays for the start of construction, and a landslide of uncertainty for coffee producers in the country.

2020

The new National Coffee Board was in place, and the rumours of nationalizing Burundi’s coffee sector were at bay. With harvest opening early April, forty-five newly built drying tables, and our McKinnon yet to be installed, we decided to start producing our first natural processed micro-lots of the season- the only coffees to be processed at Ninga Washing Station that year. By the end of August, we held the first farmer payday day at our official Ninga Washing Station site and celebrated alongside our partnering coffee farmers.

“For five years, I’ve didn’t participate in payday because it was far from home. I used to pay someone to go and collect my money on payday. I was so happy to meet with other people from around the entire hill and even saw a friend that I hadn’t seen in twenty years! I thought that she might have died because so many from our generation have. It was a great day.”
– Matilda, a seventy-five year-old old coffee farmer from Ninga hill.

What does building Ninga Washing Station mean for the future of coffee on Ninga hill?

“Having a washing station in our area is a big development, not only for coffee farmers but for everyone in our community.”

During the construction of the washing station, 200 hundred people were employed representing almost the same numbers of households from the community. We’ve been encouraged to hear that the washing station will bring change for those growing coffee in the area too.

“What is important is that we now have a washing station at home. Things at the washing station are organized, the farmer card system is fair, and the scales are good. You’re not stealing our coffee. This is encouraging.”
– Leonard, coffee farmer from Gikungere, close to Ninga hill.

Many farmers from Ninga hill won’t have to walk as far to deliver their cherries, which will help to shorten the time between coffee being picked and coffee being pulped at our washing station. This shortened time helps to reduce the risk of enzymatic reactions taking place within the coffee cherries that could impart unwanted flavour to the finished cup of coffee, and allows for the greatest potential of consistency going into pulping.

“I thought about stopping to grow coffee, but glory to God, the hope that was in me did not accept defeat! This is a victory. It is a miracle! I helped to build the washing station, and am now working as a guard. I have a story to tell to my grandchildren. Ninga Washing Station is bringing a new beginning of growing coffee. In my mind, I am like a new coffee farmer. It is amazing.”
– Tharcisse from Ninga hill in Burundi.

With our newly fitted McKinnon and the final touches happening at the washing station, we’re looking forward to producing fully washed and natural process coffees this season. We’ll also be experimenting with anaerobic lots, so keep your eyes peeled for our updates when coffee harvest opens in Burundi next month!

March 24, 2021
Building Ninga, our third Long Miles Washing Station

In 2013, we built our first washing station, Bukeye, and produced our first bag of Burundi coffee. During that harvest season, the volume of coffee cherries getting delivered to Bukeye far outstripped our small washing station’s capacity to produce coffee. It turned out that coffee farming families were coming from far and wide, travelling more than three hours by foot over slippery and broken roads to reach Bukeye; a washing station with balanced scales that paid a fair price for coffee cherries.

Vincent Nyandwi is just one of many coffee farmers that we met last coffee harvest who had walked for hours to deliver his cherries. He had to choose between walking fifteen kilometers from his home to reach Bukeye Washing Station, or five kilometers to our small cherry collection point…all while carrying a forty kilogram bag of coffee cherries on his back.

Vincent Nyandwi, a Burundian coffee farmer

The dedication of coffee farmers like Vincent to producing quality coffee stood out to our team, both in the field and on the cupping table. Every year since then, we have been trying to bring a washing station closer to these rural farming communities.

“Ninga was one of the first hills that we visited before founding Long Miles and deciding to build our own washing station[s]. After visiting the region, we fell in love with the coffee’s flavor profile on the cupping table. Building a washing station on Ninga hill would open up the possibility of working with over 2,000 neighboring coffee growing families who, up until now, have had to walk for kilometers to reach the nearest washing station. Ninga’s proximity to the Kibira Forest also opened up the opportunity to plant green belts of trees extending from the forest to the hill, helping to improve soil health and encouraging the practice of shade-grown coffee.” – Ben Carlson, co-founder of Long Miles Coffee.

Having a washing station closer to Ninga hill means that coffee farmers will be able to spend less time travelling to deliver their cherries after the many hours spent harvesting them. The time between cherry picking and then cherry processing will also be shortened; a helpful step towards improving the coffee’s quality. Ninga Washing Station will help us to build long-term relationships with coffee farming families in the region, provide neighboring communities with job opportunities and the access to farmer education.

In 2017, we bought a piece of land seated at 1900 masl, a fifteen kilometer drive from our Bukeye Washing Station. The land is flanked by the Nkokoma River, which means that fresh water will run through the McKinnon to pulp and wash the coffee parchment. Little did we know that significant changes in the country’s coffee regulatory board that year would cause a delay in the build out of the washing station.

It took us close to three years to check off all the necessary paperwork and cross the bureaucratic red tape in order to start producing coffee at our Ninga Washing Station site. With the opening of coffee harvest in April and forty-five newly built drying tables, we started producing the first natural processed micro-lots of the season.

During the natural process, coffee cherries are floated and hand-sorted after being delivered by coffee farmers to the washing station site, then taken straight to the drying tables. The whole coffee cherry spends between twenty-five to thirty days drying in its skin (depending on the weather), slowly turning from deep red to a prune-like purple-black color until fully dry; reaching the ideal 10.5% moisture level.

This coffee harvest, some farming families from Ninga hill continued to deliver their cherries to Bukeye Washing Station. These cherries were processed as both fully washed and natural micro-lots at Bukeye. Other families who grow their coffee in the same region decided to deliver their harvest to our new Ninga Washing Station site. These cherries were processed as sundried naturals. Come next year’s coffee harvest, all of the cherries grown and harvested on Ninga hill will be processed at Ninga Washing Station.

You might notice that two new coffees have been added to our fold this year: Bumba and Giku hill. These coffees were processed as sundried naturals at our Ninga Washing Station site along with the coffee cherries from Ninga hill that were delivered there.

It takes a lot of time, resources and people to build a washing station in Burundi. It’s our hope to see Ninga Washing Station built to completion in time for next year’s coffee harvest season.

The next time that you find a bag of roasted Ninga, Bumba or Giku coffee, drink a cup at your favorite local café or brew one of these coffees at home, please let us know! We would love to hear what you think.

August 7, 2020
Land for Burundi Coffee

Following @kristyjcarlson on Twitter and Instagram gets me excited about being part of this family of four that has their hearts set on helping a community in rural Burundi produce amazing coffee. I’m so happy to be a part of it.

Building a coffee washing station in Burundi has meant taking on an obscenely huge amount of challenges and obstacles on the way to realizing the dream. Let’s just say accomplishing something like this in Burundi has few more challenges in it than building that lemonade stand in Wisconsin when I was six.

For months now we have set our sites on building this coffee washing station. Finding the perfect location was key to making it a success. After 3 years of sourcing and cupping Burundi coffee, I knew where we needed to be. The place we were looking for was sitting in the middle of a triangle of the best coffee washing stations producing the best coffee in all of Burundi. Besides the best coffee, it was a place where farmers are too far to carry their coffee to the nearest station forcing them to sell to local buyers at ridiculously low prices. It has one river, bringing plenty of fresh clean water to run the de-pulper. Sitting at the perfect altitude with a micro-climate that is unique and ideal for producing the kind of coffee that makes you (ok, maybe just me) go weak in the knees.

Three years to make certain of this specific spot. Months to get all the paperwork done and meet all the farmers to explain the vision. Weeks to get all the signatures of the owners of the land willing to sell and the neighboring farmers as witnesses. Then, on the last day before signing, we find out that two of the five farmers don’t feel like selling anymore.

What do we do? Tomorrow we go back to the land to talk to the farmers. The area co-op president and commune elder have talked through our vision and are coming with us to make sure that the farmers know the kind of impact this station will have on the lives of all 2,500 families in the four surrounding hills. If they still decide they don’t want to sell are we back to square one? No, the commune elder said that we can have the two hectors next to the spot we want that are owned by the commune. The rivers the same, the slope is great, and the view is stunning. He gets the vision. He has caught hope. He tells us that they will do whatever it takes to see us partner with them.

We have found our spot and started to put down our roots. This challenge is just one of many in our way, but if it was easy we wouldn’t need to do it, it would already be done. Am I Worried? No, but we are weeks away from starting to build on land that we still don’t own with money we still have not raised… It will all happen though, it will all happen.

Coffee Guy

February 26, 2013
Focus: Building a Coffee Washing Station in Burundi

There is a reason why this coffee washing station matters. There is a community here in Burundi whose lives are on the brink of truth and hope and all things good in this world. Not that this coffee washing station is their way to the ultimate Hope, but it has been dreamed up and steeped in Hope… and we envision it oozing into every corner of these coffee farmer’s lives. We have already faced our challenges in bringing this washing station to these people. No one said it would be easy. The fundraising, the believing, the hoping that it will all coming together.

We have found our way forward in just stepping. Stepping into what we believe will happen. Stepping on the land, stepping into building plans, stepping into the community. We have found freedom in stepping forward, especially when it seems that all the world would have us do is stop.

So, here we find ourselves. Resolute to step forward. This coffee washing station will help an entire community of 2,500 coffee farmers who, last year, made $130 FOR THE YEAR on their crops. We want to change that number, and drastically, by offering coffee farmers premiums for growing great micro-lot relationship coffee. Clean water, better education and better farming practices are just a few thing we will be hoping to provide to the community in addition to the coffee washing station.

We’re stepping… and despite the fear that moving forward brings, it feels great to just be moving. THANK YOU for all the donations and email love, by the way. It has been SO GREAT to see $14,000 of our $40,000 goal come in. Let’s keep moving…

There is One who knows and sees all plans. The Creator of all things good. The bringer of Hope.

February 7, 2013

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