Roasted by Pala Kaffebrenneri

Pala was started in Trondheim by Idar Ellingsen in 2018, and is run today together with Roy Davidsen. Idar has worked in specialty coffee since 2005, first as a barista and coffee shop manager, then as head roaster and QC manager for Jacobsen og Svart and Langøra before opening his own roastery. He is a certified Q grader and a two-time Norwegian cupping champion.

The stated aim at Pala is to move backwards in the value chain and influence the coffee earlier than the final step, working with importers who are transparent about traceability. Roasting is deliberately restrained: the idea is that the roast should not overwrite what the green coffee already has. Kenya and Colombia are Idar’s own favourite origins, so this lot is squarely in Pala’s wheelhouse.

They roast on a Diedrich IR-12, a 12 kg drum roaster that heats with infrared burners rather than an open flame, which gives a gentler, more even heat transfer than a conventional gas drum.

Gakuyu-ini factory and Thirikwa FCS

In Kenya a wet mill is called a factory, and factories are owned by farmer cooperative societies. Gakuyu-ini is the sole wet mill of the Thirikwa Farmers Cooperative Society, sitting near the towns of Kerugoya and Kianyaga, around 130 km from Nairobi.

Thirikwa has roughly 1,550 smallholder members, more than 670 of them women, together tending about 400,000 coffee trees. Most members farm plots with only 200 to 250 coffee trees alongside food crops such as bananas, potatoes and avocados. The land here is deep red volcanic soil from Mount Kenya, with 1,100 to 1,400 mm of rainfall a year.

Cherries are hand picked and delivered the same day, sorted before pulping to remove underripes and foreign matter, then fermented, washed, graded by density in channels and dried on raised beds. The mill uses clean river water and recirculates it before disposal. Two collection centres exist for farmers who cannot reach the factory on foot.

Specifications