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Crop Comments: |
A
real surprise ... for only the second time in ten years of Sweet Maria's, we have found an interesting Cameroon coffee offering. This is a longberry Java cultivar and has a very Indonesia-like cup, nice chocolate and body, with a bit more brightness than Sumatras and Sulawesi coffees. It's an interesting lot!
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Cameroon arabica coffees is unusual in that the
country grows more robusta in the lowlands than true high-grown arabica.
It is also a West African coffee, whereas all the other growing regions
are East African. With the French colonial history (the bags still are
imprinted "Cameroun"), robusta was indeal for Cafe au Lait or milk drinks.
(Oh, you thought the French have a rich history of quality coffee? Not
exactly...) Anyway, the arabicas have not been treated as true specialty
coffee, historically speaking. They were intended for blending, for industrial
scale roasting, and they were treated as such. Here we have something
different, a coffee that is still a little rough around the edges but
can produce a great cup!
Most of Cameroon’s
coffee is grown by small landowners on plots of two to 10 hectares in
volcanic soil.
In order to sustain themselves and provide food for their families, many
coffee farmers in Cameroon grow other crops as well, often planted among
the coffee trees. Because they’re not close together, the trees
are less susceptible to fungus or pests, though the coffee is hard
to pick because many trees are eight to 10 feet tall. Typically,
the coffee is farmer-washed and organically grown (although only a few
farmers, such as Hill Top Mixed Farming and Agro Forestry Farms, are
certified-organic—the
rest are passively organic). Ripe cherries are hand-picked
and loaded in water drums from which poor cherries are removed.
Coffee is immediately de-pulped using small hand-cranked de-pulpers. The de-pulped
cherries are then fermented for 24 to 36 hours, rinsed and sun-dried
on woven mats. Once the coffee is dry, it is delivered to the mill where
the export processing and bagging takes place.
By most accounts, coffee
was introduced to Cameroon by the Germans in 1905, but it wasn’t
until 1929 that arabica was cultivated effectively, thanks to the introduction
of a Jamaican variety that was raised by an experimental station at
Dschang. After that, coffee took off within the country. Arabica was
produced by small growers in the Dschang, Bamenda and Foumban regions,
while robusta was grown at experimental stations at Ebolowa. However,
in the late 1980s, low coffee prices caused farmers to abandon coffee
production. It wasn’t until higher
prices returned in the mid-’90s
that farmers again began to see coffee as a sustainable crop. Cameroon coffee
has potential: a full-bodied, earthy, chocolaty flavor profile, along with
a well-rounded finish with hints of fruits. Cameroon also offers a unique coffee:
longberry is from an old Java cultivar and has the unique elongated shape
with pointed ends. The look like footballs! |
