Nyamaso Fully Washed

Nyamaso means “eyes” because the people of Nyamaso were alertly watching the neighboring hill were a battlefield between King Mwezi Gisabo and a colonialist known as Runyota was raging.  

The nearby swamp was once inhabited by the Batwa people. Batwa made their living by producing clay pots. However, modern times made it difficult for them to find enough buyers for their pots. In search of a new income, the Batwa left the swamp and joined those producing bricks on the hill. The bricks they make have gained an international reputation for their quality.  

Coffee cultivation also plays a major role in people’s income in Nyamaso. In 1993, the President of Burundi came to Nyamaso to inaugurate the station. The presence of the President along with the highly celebrated nature of the event inspired the people to promote coffee culture within the region.  

The station has gained an international reputation and is considered among the best coffee processors in Burundi. 

Bugestal supports farmers with a variety of programs designed to increase yields, incomes and quality of life. Farmers can get training in Good Agricultural Practices, practices to combat soil erosion and improve cherry quality. Bugestal runs workshops on gender equity and offers a health insurance program to farmers and their families. They distribute inputs and use demonstration plots to promote new techniques. The station regularly monitors water quality. 

During the harvest season, all coffee is selectively hand-picked. Most families only have 200 to 250 trees, and harvesting is done almost entirely by the family. Bugestal knows that even small distances can be time-consuming and expensive to travel for smallholder farmers, and they know that receiving cherries immediately after harvest is crucial to quality.  Therefore, smallholders can bring their cherries either directly to a washing station or to one of the 12 collection sites situated throughout growing areas. Farmers are paid the same for their quality cherry regardless of where they bring their cherries. In this way, farmers are not disadvantaged due to their location and Bugestal bears the cost of transport to stations.   

Washing stations make the first payment to farmers between 15-30 June. The second payment comes later in the summer. If the coffee wins a competition or sells for extremely high specialty prices, Bugestal gives another payment approximately a year after the harvest season.   

Quality assurance begins as soon as farmers deliver their cherry. Cherries are wet processed under constant supervision. The pulping, fermentation time, washing, grading in the channels and a final soaking is closely monitored. All cherry is floated in small buckets as a first step to check quality. Bugestal still purchases floaters (damaged, underripe, etc) but immediately separates the two qualities and only markets floaters as B-quality cherry. After floating, the higher quality cherry is sorted again by hand to remove all damaged, underripe and overripe cherries.   

After sorting, cherry is pulped within 6 hours of delivery. The machine can process up to 3 tons of cherries per hour. During pulping, cherry is separated into high- and low-grade by density on a Mackinon 3-disc pulper outfitted with an additional separation disk.  The coffee is then fermented in water from a nearby stream for 10-12 hours, depending on ambient temperature. A small sign on the fermentation tank keeps track of each lot. The sign mentions the washing station name, date of cherry purchase, grade of the bean and the time when fermentation began. Trained agronomists check the beans by hand regularly to ensure fermentation is halted at the perfect time. The station workers trample the parchment for 30 minutes in the fermentation tank. This trampling process helps to remove mucilage on the fermented parchment. After this, the parchment is given fresh water to move it into the washing-grading canal, where it is washed. 

After fermentation is completed, coffee is run through washing and grading canals. As the beans flow through, wooden bars that are laid across the canal prevent beans of specific densities from passing through. These bars are spaced across the channel. While the first blockade stops the most-dense beans, the next is arranged to stop the second most-dense beans and so on. In total, the channel separates beans into seven grades according to density. After washing, this parchment is poured onto wooden trays or nylon bags and carried to the drying tables, each in its separate quality group. Each tray and nylon bag of parchment keeps its traceability tag with all info. 

The beans are then transported to the drying tables where they will dry slowly for 2-3 weeks. Pickers go over the drying beans for damaged or defective beans that may have been missed in previous quality checks. Usually, each table holds 800kg of parchment. In the peak of the season, the maximum load for a table is 1000kg. Each table has a traceability tag with the lot info. The parchment is left to dry from sunrise to sunset and is covered with a sheet during the evening or when it rains. If the weather conditions are good, the parchment takes on average 10 to 14 days to dry. During this time, parchment is turned regularly. The moisture level is carefully monitored and any parchment with visual defects is removed. On the table, the beans are dried to 11.5%.  

Once dry, parchment is bagged and taken to the warehouse. Bugestal’s team of expert cuppers assess every lot (which is separated by station, day and quality) at the lab. This traceability of the station, day and quality is maintained throughout the entire process.

Before shipment, coffee is sent to Budeca, Burundi’s largest dry mill. The coffee is milled and then hand-sorted by a team of hand-pickers who look closely at every single bean to ensure zero defects. It takes a team of two hand-pickers a full day to look over a single bag. UV lighting is also used on the beans and any beans that glow — usually an indication of a defect — are removed.

The mill produces an average of 300 containers of 320 bags per year. Budeca is located in Burundi’s capital city, Gitega, where the population is around 30,000 people. Since there are approximately 3,000 people working at the mill - mostly as hand pickers - this means that Budeca employs nearly 10% of the total population in Gitega for at least half the year (during the milling season). The same is true in the provinces of Ngozi and Kayanza, where Bugestal is among the first employers in the region during the coffee harvest season. This has an incalculable impact on a country like Burundi - where unemployment rates are above 50% - especially in rural areas and among young people.

Bugestal’s headquarters are located in Ngozi Province in the Northern part of Burundi, approximately 150km from Bujumbura, the largest city and previously the capital of Burundi. Bugestal operates nine washing stations in Ngozi and Muyinga provinces and works with more than 15,000 farmers. Coffee washing stations are all certified by Rainforest Alliance, 4C and C.A.F.E. Practices. Bugestal is part of the Sucafina Group, a family-owned coffee company promoting farm-to-roaster trade. Bugestal creates social impact at origin using farm-direct supply chains and works in collaboration with the Kahawatu Foundation to help farmers improve their livelihoods through the increase of coffee production.