It’s August and the coffee harvest season is officially over. The wet-mills finished processing in May and June and are now in the process of exporting their coffee.
The coffee is trucked from the wet-mills to a warehouse and dry-mill facility. The dry-mill removes the parchment (or outer shell) leaving just the green bean.
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In the warehouses, hundreds of ladies sort the green coffee removing damaged or defective beans. This process is very time consuming; it takes one person 2 days to sort a 60kg bag.
After the coffee is sorted and the pre-shipment sample is approved by the cupping lab, the coffee can be exported. OCIR Café, the Rwandan coffee authority, issues a certificate of origin and the bags are loaded onto a cargo container.
From Kigali, the trucks of coffee go to Uganda, then through Kenya to the coast and the port city of Mombasa. This trip takes an average of 4 days. Once the coffee is loaded onto a ship in Mombasa, the trip to California can take 2-3 months.
The process from start to finish is long but the end product is worth it – good quality coffee!