Gathaithi station

Gathaithi is a single wet mill, or “factory”, run by the Gathaithi Farmers’ Cooperative Society in Tetu, Nyeri County, about 160 km north of Nairobi between Mount Kenya and the Aberdare range. The cooperative was registered in 2000 after splitting from the larger Giant Tetu society and now has more than 1,600 members, most of them farming small plots. Money set aside from each harvest is used to pre-finance members’ school fees, farm inputs and emergencies.

Processing follows the Kenyan washed method: cherries are sorted, pulped, fermented overnight, washed through grading channels, soaked in clean water and dried on raised beds. The varieties are the usual Kenyan mix of SL28 and SL34, grown for cup quality, alongside the more disease-resistant Ruiru 11 and Batian. AA is the largest screen size in the Kenyan grading system, so it describes bean size rather than a cup score.

About Tanat

Tanat is a specialty roaster in Paris. It started in 2016 as Kawa Coffee, a wholesale roaster for cafés and restaurants, and now also runs its own shop and online store under the Tanat name. Co-founder Alexis Gagnaire placed third at the 2019 World AeroPress Championship. Tanat buys directly from farms, producers and cooperatives it has worked with over several years, and roasts separate profiles for filter and espresso. This lot is roasted light, for filter.

Brewing it

A dense, washed Kenyan like this works well as pour-over or AeroPress. With an AeroPress, the paper affects how clean the cup ends up, and Aesir AeroPress filters are made to let through less sediment than standard papers. For pour-over, 15 g of coffee to 250 g of water with a total time around 3:00 is a reasonable place to start. If you build your own brew water, APAX LAB x TANAT Lucid 2.1 is the water profile Tanat developed with APAX LAB, designed for clarity in light, washed coffees like this one.

Coffee details