Rotheca Women’s Project FW SWP

Rotheca Women’s Project Swiss Water Process (SWP) coffee is the result of the work of over 2,400 producers farming in Muyinga and Kirundo provinces who contribute to Muramba and Butihinda washing stations. Muramba and Butihinda are part of a network of seven wet mills owned and operated Angele Ciza, owner of Kahawa Link Company (Kalico).

Over 80% of the 2,400+ contributing farms are owned or managed by women. From the beginning, Angele and Kalico have been focused on empowering female producers. In addition to her focus on agronomic education and quality improvement, Kalico offer scholarships to pay for girls’ school fees and is pioneering new sustainability programs for farmers.

Angele also has her own 10-hectare coffee plantation in Northern Burundi where she employs over 100 women at her farm and on-site washing station. A believer in the power of education, Angele also pays the school fees for the children of her employees.

The microclimate of the hills that surround these washing stations create the prime conditions for coffee production. A multitude of rivers crisscross the region and the hills’ microclimate has plentiful rain, a high altitude of 1,800 meters above sea level and a great environment for the delicate and flavorful Bourbon varieties to flourish.

Angele knew that in order to produce the best quality coffee, she needed to forge partnerships with the farmers delivering to her stations. From the beginning, the washing stations focused on agricultural extension work with the producers that emphasized best practices for quality production. The stations offer advice to farmers on everything from establishing nurseries to picking only the ripest cherry. Kalico continues to work directly with contributing farmers to provide education on proper cherry selection.

As farmers continue to improve the quality of their cherry, Angele is focusing her investments on additional training, access to inputs, micro-credit and micro-insurance, enhancing environmental protections and strengthening social infrastructures.

Farmers selectively handpick and deliver cherry to the station each day.  At intake, cherry is floated to remove any underripes and pulped. Pulped parchment is fermented for approximately 14 hours and  washed in clean water.

Employees sort drying parchment before laying it on raised drying tables where it sundries for 10 to 14 days. Once dry, parchment is stored in the station’s clean, well-ventilated warehouse before being sent to the dry mill.

Mrs. Angele Ciza and her friend Consolata purchased seven washing stations in 2012 when they began Kahawa Link Company (Kalico). Today, Angele owns and manages Kalico with her son, Alex.

Angele has a 10-hectare coffee plantation in Northern Burundi and employs over 100 women at her farm and washing stations. Additionally, she pays school fees for the children of her employees.

Young consumers are driving decaf’s resurgence and, like their caffeine-drinking peers, they’re expecting high-quality coffees that are often traceable and certified. With more than 50% of the world’s population under 30, the demand for decaffeinated coffee – and the need for specialty decaf that tastes good and meets ethical or environmental standards – is rising.

Swiss Water offers an alternative to consumers concerned by methyl chloride (MC) and ethyl acetate (EA) processes. Because water processing does not use added chemical compounds, coffees can maintain organic certifications and customers can be assured of the absence of additional chemicals.

The difficulty of decaffeination is that many of the flavor compounds that give coffee its excellent taste are, like caffeine, water-soluble. Thus, any decaffeination method needs to effectively single out and remove the caffeine molecule while preserving as many of the flavor compounds as possible.

The process begins with a batch of green coffee beans that are soaked in water to remove the caffeine. In water, many of the flavor compounds are also removed as well, but don’t worry! This is intentional and will preserve help flavor in the future.

This first batch of beans are then discarded. This process only needs to happen once because the mixture produced by soaking those beans, called green coffee extract (GCE), can be maintained and reused to decaffeinate many batches of green beans.

The principle behind water processing is that water can only absorb a set amount of flavor compounds and caffeine before it is completely saturated. When water is fully saturated, it cannot accept (and remove) any more flavor compounds, even if they’re in the coffee. That first batch of beans created a fully saturated water mixture, the GCE. In order to process the beans for decaffeination, the GCE is run through a filter to remove only the caffeine.

Now the GCE is fully saturated except for caffeine. When a new batch of green beans are placed in the GCE, the only compound from the new beans that will be accepted into the GCE is caffeine, everything else will remain in the beans because the GCE is already saturated with those chemicals and unable to ‘take’ anymore.

SWP decaf composition varies from lot to lot, but SWP does provide traceability info. Please reach out to [email protected] if you need any help tracing your lot.

While Kayanza in northwestern Burundi is the most famous coffee-growing province in the country, Kirundo, in the northeast, is also well suited for coffee production. 

Most farms are situated at high altitudes between 1,400 and 1,700 meters above sea level.  Due to a lack of infrastructure and financial capacity, most farmers do not use any chemical inputs, making most coffees grown here Organic by default. Additionally, most rootstock is older, which leads to low average yields per hectare. However, thanks to the climate and geography, the province has an immense potential to produce specialty coffees and is well on its way to doing so.