We taste: Aromas of honeysuckle and lime zest open the cup, followed by sweet notes of dried fig and butterscotch. Brisk black tea provides structure and a clean, refreshing finish. 

Producer: small-holder producers / The Coffee Yards

Region: Mt. Elgon, Uganda  

Elevation: 1400-2000 meters above sea level

Process: Fully washed

Coffee Story

Uganda’s Mt. Elgon rises along the country’s eastern border with Kenya and is home to one of its two primary Arabica-growing regions. Coffee is grown across the mountain’s western slopes, often on very small farms with only a few dozen to a few hundred trees. This lot brings together coffee from roughly 300 registered producers working with four community collection stations at elevations ranging from 1,400 to 2,000 meters.

The Coffee Yards was founded by Norman Mukuru, an agronomist and agronomical engineer who has spent much of his career working with coffee in Uganda. After developing collection and processing operations for a large regional exporter, Norman established his own processing facility outside Mbale at the base of Mt. Elgon. The idea was to create a central place where coffees coming down from the mountain could be dried and processed with greater consistency and attention to quality.

That model has continued to evolve. Today, The Coffee Yards purchases coffee through a network of community stations, allowing Norman and his team to work directly with producers while taking greater control over processing after the coffee leaves the farm. For this Elgon Reserve lot, SL14, SL28, and Nyasaland varieties are pulped and pre-fermented in water at the farm before being delivered to the yard. Fermentation is then managed and extended before the coffee is drip dried and gradually finished on raised beds and tarps.

Centralizing these later stages of processing is particularly important in a region where coffee comes from hundreds of small farms. Individual producers may contribute relatively small amounts of coffee, making consistency difficult at scale. The Coffee Yards provides the infrastructure to separate lots, manage fermentation and drying, and build more traceable coffees from the communities it works with across Mt. Elgon.