Organic coffee making in the Uganda's gorilla highlands

A cup of coffee ☕ would be good before starting the gorilla trekking in Uganda. The country is gifted with beautiful landscape and the volcanic mountains as a special feature here. These volcanic mountains are inhabited by the gorillas and golden monkeys and these have increased tourism sector in this region.
While all these are found here, the dramatic culture of the bafumbira people that live in Kisoro is another bonus for tourists visiting this place through their cultural dances.
The region has rich volcanic fertile soil that favour most of the crops and today I will basically talk about coffee planting, harvesting, processing and consumption.

Kisoro region that is located in the southwestern part of the country is now famous for the growth of coffee farming due to the good climate and soil.
I visited my friend Peter who is famous local coffee farmer in the region and has promoted both local and international tourism though coffee making experience.
He hosts many tourists across and beyond the continent who come to experience every step of coffee until cup time.
The nursery beds are always watered during dry seasons and always kept under shade.

They are later transplanted to the main garden to be independent plants.
After some few years, they bear green berries which will later turn red in color when they are ready for harvesting.
Harvesting process is done by hand picking, collected berries are washed in cold water and unskinned to get clean coffee beans. These clean beans are later left on sun to dry on a mesh for some days. They are later pounded with a pestle in a local wooden mortar to remove a another dried outer layer to get pure green coffee beans.

Winnowing is then done manually here that is assisted by the direction of wind. It helps to remove those unwanted layers pounded off the beans.

The clean beans are later roasted on fire for some minutes with regular stirring. My friend Peter says it is at that point where they determine light roasted, medium roasted or dark roasted stages. Light roasted beans have more caffeine than dark roasted and most of tourists and locals prefer getting medium roasted powder.

The Uganda coffee development authority (UCDA) donated him a manual grinding machine some years back to him ease the work since he is promoting local and international tourism. The grinder is used to get powder from the roasted coffee.

On this photo I tried to do this demonstration on a plate so that you can understand it more. We have green berries, ripe/red berries, clean beans, pure green beans, light roasted, medium roasted and dark roasted beans with their consecutive powder forms.

You are then given the chance to taste all the three coffee on a cup.
This experience is done at his home and takes about two hours to take you through the steps.

Peter later gifted me with the medium roasted powder to take home with me.
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