The Maguta Coffee Estate, run by our friend David Ngibuini, works across Nyeri and Embu counties in Central Kenya, and produces some of the most classically extraordinary Kenyan coffee you can access, using both traditional and non traditional processing methods. The Murware Farmers who deliver their cherries to this Estate possess a team spirit and assist each other to maintain their farming standards. This group is a fast-growing cluster of farmers in the Muruguru area with a collective 18000 trees growing coffee cherries on red volcanic soils.

 

The Maguta Estate contains enough materials to process coffee to a high-quality that allows the producers and farmers to be paid a better income. It has 10 fermentation tanks, 3 shaded parabolic drying tables each with a 1-tonne capacity, an all concrete fermentation room, Brix meter, pH meter, and more to help improve the processing quality. Project Origin and Maguta Estate continues to collaborate on our signature carbonic maceration processing techniques, producing a sustainable offering of high-quality coffees each harvest. In most recent harvests, Project Origin and David have been working towards nitrogen flushed processing techniques that can really influence the tactile and mouthfeel of the cup, as well as provide clarity and intensify flavours. These techniques are helping us take the Kenyan profiles we know and love, and refining them, ultimately raising the perceived quality of these cups, increasing their value, and strengthening the work of David’s community.

 

Recently, the Kenyan coffee sector has slowly declined in production due to farmers moving away from coffee production to alternative cash crops, a decision driven by the poor payments to the farmers for their work. By working with Maguta Estate, we hope to help them reach their goals of empowering the communities and improving their livelihoods by building the resources they need to increase their coffee quality, and therefore, increase the prices of the cherries they work to produc