Gasharu

About This Coffee

Gasharu

This anaerobic natural lot comes from Gasharu Washing Station in Wimana, near Lake Kivu in Rwanda’s Nyamasheke-Gatare district. Gasharu partners with 1,075 smallholder farmers in a region bordering Nyungwe Forest National Park—one of Central Africa’s largest and most pristine mountain rainforests, home to a quarter of the continent’s primate species.

Gasharu is led by Valentin Kamenyi, who grew up in rural Rwanda during the 1990s. As a child, he heard myths that coffee beans were used to make bullets—tiny, powerful, and mysterious. While those stories are long gone, coffee remains deeply meaningful to him as the lifeblood of his community.

The Process

Ripe cherries are first handpicked, then sorted by flotation. They undergo 72 hours of anaerobic fermentation before being sun-dried on raised African beds for 30–40 days, weather permitting. During drying, the coffee is hand-sorted to remove defects, turned regularly for even drying, and covered during rain or intense sun to prevent damage.

A quality controller monitors humidity daily until it reaches 12%. The coffee is then bagged and stored in a cool, dry warehouse to rest before secondary processing such as hulling, grading, and sorting.