UGANDA MOUNTAIN HARVEST YELLOW HONEY

Mountain Harvest is a very young and big-thinking group, first established in 2017. The company is dedicated to long-term economic and environmental sustainability for smallholders on Mt. Elgon. These farmers are Uganda’s highest and most diversified coffee growers with incredible quality potential thanks to the climate, soil fertility, and a longstanding culture of land stewardship, but who historically struggle to meet specialty standards by processing coffee in tiny amounts on homemade equipment.

In an effort to raise the economic standard in remote coffee-growing Elgon communities, Mountain Harvest began as an impact investing project underwritten by Lutheran World Relief (LWR). It has expanded in just a few years to include farmer education and training, central processing infrastructure, storage facilities throughout the region, detailed quality control, and international marketing. As of this year Mountain Harvest works with 850 individual smallholders across 8 communities on Mt. Elgon, with each farm growing between 600-1,000 coffee trees. And their coffee stands up to the best fully washed Uganda arabicas we typically taste all year.

The vast majority of coffee managed by Mountain Harvest is traditionally processed by farmers at home and delivered as parchment. This coffee, however, is a centrally-processed honey microlot from 76 smallholder farmers at the Kajere Station. Red ripe cherries purchased from Kajere community farmers are pulped and placed on raised beds. The coffee is spread in an open drying space for 3-5 days, then placed within the Kajere drying shed for the coffee's final drying until 11% moisture. The coffee is then transferred to Mountain Harvest's temperature-controlled warehouse to rest and homogenize before milling.

This honey processed lot is our first from the Mountain Harvest producer group and we are loving the mouthfeel on this coffee. The natural fermentation of the mucilage as the coffee dries leads to notes of plum and wildflower honey, with a sweet malic acidity to round out the mouthfeel.