Burundi - Giku FW Lot #5 [25/26]

We're big fans of the work of the Long Miles Coffee Project, and we've been proudly buying and roasting their lots since we launched. This season marks the fourth harvest we've had coffee from the Giku Hill smallholders - we think a perfect example of the profile of top notch washed Burundian red bourbon. We're finding this coffee super juicy, light and bright.

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Light Roaster Influence: Burundian washed coffees tend to pick up a little extra colour in the roaster that's inconsistent with the actual perceived roast degree in the cup - we're roasting this lot super light, bright, acid and aromatic forward.

Best Rested: 3-4 weeks

Filter: 60g/L & 96°C, with rest we like to move down to 94°C

Espresso: Turbos - 18g to 48g in 22-26s. Excellent soup

We’re tasting: Super bright citrus zest, chamomile and date aromatics. In the cup we're getting sweet meyer lemon, white grape, dried apricots, buttery shortbread sweetness and vanilla chantilly cream; with a complex tea note that reminds us of light oolong.

Traceability

Country of Origin:	Burundi
Region:	Gikungere, Butaganzwa, Kayanza Province
Farm:	150 smallholder farmers selling cherry to Ninga CWS
Station:	Ninga CWS, Long Miles Coffee Project
Variety:	Red Bourbon
Elevation:	1600-1750 MASL
Process:	Washed: Ripe cherries picked and delivered on foot/bicycle to Ninga CWS. Cherries floated and skimmed to remove underripes. Pulped with initial density sorting before wet fermenting for 12-36 hours depending on temperature. Post ferment coffees washed using serpentine grading channels to sort by density whilst scrubbing mucilage. Dried for 1 day on shaded pre-drying tables with hand sorting to remove defects before being moved to raised beds
Import Partner:	Osito
Harvest	Crop 25/26, Arrived UK March 24th 2026 Fourth harvest purchasing coffee from Giku hill smallholders.

 

The Story

The Story

Long Miles Coffee Project was founded in 2011 by Ben and Kristy Carlson, initially operating a single washing station at Bukeye in Muramvya Province. The organisation has since grown into a vertically integrated producer and exporter working with several thousand smallholder families across three washing stations in Burundi, with further operations in Uganda and Kenya. Their sourcing model is built around hill-level traceability, whereby cherry deliveries are logged against the specific hill each farmer works, and lots are kept physically separate through fermentation, drying, milling and export. This allows individual hillsides to be offered as distinct lots rather than being pooled under a broader station or regional name.

Ninga is the newest of the three Burundian washing stations, and the one through which Giku cherry is processed. Land for the station was purchased in 2017, but construction and licensing took the better part of three years to complete, with first production beginning in 2020. Prior to Ninga becoming operational, farmers from Gikungere and the surrounding hills were required to carry their cherry on foot to the Bukeye station, a journey of several hours each way across two rivers and a provincial border. The opening of Ninga has substantially shortened that journey and brought processing infrastructure within reach of communities that previously had limited access to it.

This is our fourth consecutive harvest sourcing from the smallholders of Gikungere hill. Keeping lots separated at hill level adds a meaningful amount of work for a washing station in terms of logging, processing and storage, and that additional effort is more easily justified where roasters commit to returning for the same hills in subsequent harvests. Consistent repeat purchasing is therefore a fairly central part of how a hill-level sourcing model is sustained over time, and is something we place real weight on in how we approach our buying at origin.

The wider context for the 2025/26 Burundian harvest remains a challenging one. Exporters in country are currently navigating chronic fuel shortages, a dual exchange rate system that disadvantages those converting export revenues at the official rate, and a generally difficult logistical environment for moving coffee out of a landlocked country. Against that backdrop, the work being done by organisations like Long Miles in maintaining quality, traceability and a meaningful return of value to producers becomes all the more significant, and is a substantial part of why we continue to prioritise these relationships within our green buying.