Cameroon AA – Roasted Coffee

Taste & Crema

Cameroon AA can be described both as fresh and complex. The flavor has both bright citrus notes and subdued roasted layers of nuts. Together, it works wonderfully. The body is smooth and creamy, and the finish is long and sweet. The cup smells very intensely of fruit.

Origins

For Cameroon, coffee is an extremely important crop, having been cultivated since the late 19th century when it was a German colony. Since then, the equatorial country has produced more and more coffee, but there was also a period when yields halved. Reasons for this included poor farming practices, aging coffee trees, lack of fertilizers and competition from other export crops such as cocoa.

But nowadays, Cameroon grows and processes around 40,000t of coffee each year, keeping it roughly 20th in the world rankings. The coffee industry employs hundreds of thousands of people, the vast majority of whom live in rural areas. They grow arabica and robusta, of which the latter thrives in the local conditions. Arabica coffee fields are mainly in English-speaking areas while French-speaking farmers harvest robusta. The Oku region, where the Cameroon AA Arabica originates from, comprises some 36 villages and is situated in the hills in the northwest of the country, and is therefore relatively cold. Mount Oku, which overlooks the region, is the 2nd highest mountain in mainland Central Africa – the volcano rises to 3,011m. Cameroonian coffee is harvested from October to March.

In Oku, coffee trees are planted at 1,800-2,000m, surrounded by banana and orange trees. They provide desirable shade and protect them from the wind, and their falling leaves are a valuable fertilizer. Add to this the fact that the soil is volcanic and, therefore, rich in minerals and that the farmers do not use any industrially produced treatments or fertilizers, and you are guaranteed to get coffee of the very best quality.

The harvest is done by hand, and the farmers use a process known as the washed method. They first soak the ripe coffee cherries in water and remove any defective fruit. The high-quality ones are pressed through crushing plates to remove the top skin. They leave the grains, coated with the residual sweet pulp, to ferment in special tanks with water for several hours to days. This dissolves the pulp and loosens the green coffee bean. They rinse it again with clean water and finally dry it in direct sunlight. During the drying process, they must turn the coffee over to avoid molding.

Coffee packaging preview

Our quality aluminum packaging lacks any bold graphics, as we’d rather focus on the taste of our coffee. It always comes fresh thanks to degassing valve, which releases the gases that occur after roasting. Thanks to the hermetic seal, this container helps the contents further keep their freshness and protect them against humidity, light or foreign odors.