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Burundi

Mikuba

Mikuba

The first natural release of the year by Long Miles in Burundi, with soft stewed berry and dark chocolate notes

$27.00 USD
$27.00 USD
Size

About

Coffee Expression This natural lot has notes of stewed berries and a soft, jam-like sweetness

Producer Mikuba is our first naturally processed release of the year by Long Miles in Burundi.

Whole Bean Coffee / Both for filter and espresso

Technical Data

Producer Mikuba Farmers

Region Kayanza

Altitude 2000 masl

Varietal Bourbon

Process Natural

Harvest  May 2024

Brewing Advice

Water is one of the most critical components of an excellent coffee experience. We recommend using mineral water of a soft Total Dissolved Solids count, ideally below 150 ppm. 

Rested coffee During the resting process, harsh and astringent flavors, which can even be perceived as a ‘roast’ character, soften out, allowing a clearer and brighter expression of the coffee’s character to shine.  

We recommend resting our coffees for at least 10 days after the roast date, and we often find excellent results, especially for particularly dense coffees, beyond 6 weeks.

Brewing Our straightforward approach to coffee carries over into brewing. We recommend our roasted coffee for all brew methods, regardless of whether it is immersion, percolation or espresso. We believe that there is one correct way to roast a single coffee, roasting lightly, in such a way as to release its innate qualities and showcase its quality. Learn more about different brewing techniques and specific brew guides here.

Shipping & Delivery

· Free shipping above $79 and on all subscription orders

· Ships within 1-3 days from Brooklyn, New York

· Coffee is roasted to order

· More info

View full details

The Long Miles Coffee Project

The Long Miles Project, founded by Ben and Kristy Carlson, began work in 2013, aiming to raise the bar of specialty coffees coming out of Burundi. The project works with more than 5,000 individual coffee farmers living near three central washing stations, Bukeye, opened in 2013, Heza, from 2014 and Ninga, which had its first harvest in 2020. There are several reasons why producing speciality coffee in Burundi is an incredibly difficult task. 

There’s the incredibly unstable political situation, where government can change rules on coffee prices and value chain seemingly overnight, the practical challenge of being a small landlocked country attempting to export coffee by sea freight, the constant threat of unrest. But through it all the Carlson family have managed to establish themselves as producers and exporters of consistently delicious coffees, all the while providing some semblance of stability to the lives of smallholder farmers that surround their washing stations in the northern Kayanza Province, near the border with Rwanda.

Continuing on the cyclic nature of Burundi’s coffee harvest, this year has seen another jump in production, volumes are significantly higher than last year, but not quite as large as the bumper harvest of 2022. Quality has remained at an excellent level, thanks to the Long Miles team’s tireless work at each of the stations.

Coffee farmers from the Mikuba hill deliver to Long Miles’ nearby Heza station. Heza sits at 1960 masl, so harvest normally starts around two weeks later here than at the lower altitude Bukeye station. This high altitude also leads to impressive views over the Kibira rainforest to Rwanda, which have given Heza its name; Heza means ‘beautiful place’ in Kirundi. Heza was built in January 2014, and now serves nearly 2,000 individual farmers. Heza also helps local farmers by supplying trees from a coffee tree nursery with over 15,000 seedlings. 

This lot from Mikuba has been processed using a natural method. This softens the typical fresh and bright berry notes into a rich and sweet jam, and rounds out the often slightly herbal finish into dark chocolate.

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