TANZANIA - KORONGO
A fully washed coffee that reflects Tanzania’s growing ability to produce outstanding specialty coffee lots.
FARM: Various Coffee Farmers
VARIETAL: Blue Mountain , Bourbon, SL28, Typica
PROCESSING: Fully Washed
ALTITUDE: 1,600 - 1,900 meters above sea level
REGION: Mbozi, Mbeya & Mbinga
TASTING NOTES: Smooth, Mandarin Orange, Raspberry
ABOUT THIS COFFEE
Named after the Swahili word for flamingo, Korongo is sourced from a network of washing stations across Mbozi, Mbeya, and Mbinga in Tanzania’s Southern Highlands.
Carefully selected by quality control teams in Tanzania, Korongo highlights the country’s true potential, delivering a consistent, fully traceable cup in large volumes. It captures the best of Tanzania’s distinctive flavor profiles
This Korongo lot is IMPACT verified — a responsible sourcing standard that focuses on five key areas: improving carbon emissions, protecting human rights, promoting regenerative agriculture, achieving living income, and preventing deforestation. Through IMPACT verification, farmers gain access to new markets and opportunities to improve their livelihoods while making a greater positive environmental and social impact through their production.
In addition to growing coffee, farmers typically intercrop with corn, beans, groundnuts, sunflowers, and ginger.
HARVEST & POST-HARVEST
Cherries are hand-harvested, and processing takes place on individual farms, which means methods can vary from farmer to farmer. Generally, cherries are pulped using either an eco-pulper or a standard pulper and then fermented. Following fermentation, parchment coffee is dried on raised beds for 14–20 days.
Once dry, the parchment rests for 2–3 months in cooperative warehouses before being transferred to mills in either Mbozi or Mbinga — both located in Southern Tanzania — for preparation and export.
Coffee in Tanzania is graded according to size. AB beans are those between screen sizes 15 and 18, meaning the beans measure between 6 and 7 millimeters in diameter.
COFFEE IN TANZANIA
Coffee’s roots in Tanzania can be traced via oral history back to the Haya tribe of Northwest Tanzania in the 16th century. Following German and then British colonial rule, the Tanzanian coffee industry has undergone many transformations and adjustments in an effort to create the most equal, profitable and high-quality coffee possible. Today, our in-country partner, Sucafina Tanzania, is invested in improving the coffee and the lives of smallholder farmers through a variety of initiatives.
Coffee in Tanzania was grown almost exclusively in the North for a long time. The Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Tarime, Kagera, Kigoma and Karatu/Ngorongoro regions were prized for their ideal Arabica growing conditions. At the time, coffee production was so concentrated in the north that Moshi, a northern municipality, was the only hub for all coffee milling and sales.
Operations in Moshi grew to truly massive proportions in the 1950s and early-1960s. Since both Tanzania, Kenya and Burundi were under British rule in the post-war decades, Moshi was the second milling and sales hub (after Nairobi, Kenya) for British coffee production.
Coffee cultivation has extended southwards in recent years. In addition to the historical powerhouse regions in the north, coffee is now also grown in the southern regions of Ruvuma and Mbeya/Mbozi. Most Southern expansion of coffee growing occurred in the 1970s and 1980s and was encouraged by two projects supported by European backers. In an ironic twist, today 75 to 85% of total coffee production in Tanzania today comes from farms in the south.
