Kenya AA Plus Kijani Kiboko – raw coffee beans

Kenya AA Plus Kijani Kiboko – green coffee for your own roasting

Kenya AA Plus Kijani Kiboko is for those who want to start with the raw, green coffee bean and decide for themselves how the finished coffee will develop through the roasting process.

The coffee has a fresh and fruity flavor potential with notes of lemon, lime, and raspberry. The supplier's profile also describes the green coffee as full-bodied with a pleasant acidity, which makes it interesting to work with if you want to explore the balance between fresh fruitiness, acidity, and body.

At Brændeholm Risteri, we work with this same green coffee ourselves. In our own version, we choose a light roast profile because we want to preserve as much of the coffee's origin character as possible and give the fresh and fruity sides room in the finished cup.

If you want to compare with other green coffees, you will find our entire assortment of raw and green coffee beans for home roasting.

Our experience roasting Kenya AA

When we roast Kenya AA Plus Kijani Kiboko ourselves, we choose to keep the roast light.

The goal is not just to make the coffee light-roasted for its own sake. We do it because we want to preserve the coffee's origin and let its fresh and fruity character take up more space than the taste of the roast itself.

In our pre-roasted version, we especially experience a coffee with a lively and fruity expression.

This does not mean that you necessarily have to copy our roast profile. Part of the interesting aspect of buying green coffee beans is precisely that you can investigate for yourself how the same coffee changes character when you change the roast.

If you want to taste the direction we have chosen, you can compare with our light-roasted Kenya AA Plus Kijani Kiboko.

What does Kenya AA mean?

AA is the coffee's grading.

This specific green coffee is also sorted to Screen 17–18, which describes the size of the green coffee beans.

It is useful to distinguish between these two pieces of information:

• AA: The coffee’s stated Kenyan grading
• Screen 17–18: The specific size sorting of the beans

We do not use the term “Plus” as a technical quality explanation, because our current supplier data does not provide a separate definition of “Plus”.

Green coffee profile

• Origin: Kenya
• Product: Raw / green coffee beans
• Producer: Mumbi
• Altitude: Approx. 1,800 m a.s.l.
• Grading: AA
• Bean sorting: Screen 17–18
• Harvest period: October–February
• Flavor notes: Lemon, lime, and raspberry
• Flavor character: Fresh and fruity with pleasant acidity
• Usage: Home roasting / coffee roasting
• Roast degree: Determined by you

Roast the coffee to the profile you want

There is not just one roast degree you should choose for Kenya AA Plus Kijani Kiboko.

Your roaster, batch size, heat transfer, development, and the overall roast profile affect the result. Therefore, we do not recommend one universal time or temperature to be followed across different roasting equipment.

As a general flavor-related starting point, you can work with the following directions:

Lighter roast

A lighter roast typically leaves more room for freshness, fruitiness, and origin character.

That is the direction we chose for Kenya AA Plus ourselves, because we want to preserve as much of the coffee's character from the raw product as possible.

Medium roast

If you take the roasting further, you can experiment with a different balance between the coffee’s fresh character, sweetness, body, and roast characteristics.

Darker roast

A further developed roast will usually give more room to the roast character itself and less to the freshest and most origin-typical elements.

This does not mean that one profile is objectively better than the other. It depends on what you want to get out of the coffee.

If you want to understand the general differences better, you can read our page about light, medium, and dark roast profiles.

Flavor notes on green coffee – what do they mean?

The flavor notes lemon, lime, and raspberry do not mean that the raw green coffee beans themselves taste like a finished cup of coffee.

The flavor notes describe the character that can be experienced in the roasted and brewed coffee. Your own roasting has a great impact on which parts of the coffee’s potential become most apparent.

Therefore, two people can start with the same Kenya AA and end up with coffees that taste different.

That is exactly what makes home roasting interesting.

A green coffee with both fruitiness and body

The established flavor notes of this coffee are lemon, lime, and raspberry, and these are the ones we continue to use as the primary flavor profile.

But the profile of the green coffee is broader than the citrus notes alone might suggest.

The supplier's assessment describes the coffee as having a full body and pleasant acidity, and it also points to both fruity and sweeter flavor directions.

This makes it interesting if you want to experiment with a coffee where you don't just work with acidity, but also with how the roast affects the body, sweetness, and balance in the cup.

Can Kenya AA be used for different brewing methods?

Yes.

In our experience, this coffee can work for all brewing methods, but the roast profile will have a major impact on how the individual brewing method is experienced.

We choose a light profile ourselves, but you can, for example, experiment with the coffee for:

• Filter coffee
• Pour over
• AeroPress
• French press
• Espresso
• Other brewing methods of your choice

When buying green coffee, it is therefore better to think:

“How do I want to roast the coffee for my preferred brewing method?”

rather than thinking that the green bean can only be used for one specific brewing method.

How to get to know the green coffee better

If you have not roasted Kenya AA before, it can be an advantage to start with a small trial batch.

Note, for example:

• The amount of green coffee
• How you develop the roast
• When you stop the roast
• How the finished coffee looks and smells
• How the coffee tastes after resting
• Which brewing method you use

If you then change one or a few things at a time, it becomes easier to understand what actually affects the result.

You can also roast two different profiles of the same coffee and taste them side by side.

Green Kenya AA from a coffee roastery that works with the coffee itself

At Brændeholm Risteri, we don't just sell Kenya AA as green coffee beans.

We also work with the same coffee in the roastery and sell our own light-roasted interpretation of it.

This gives us practical experience with the green coffee from the bean to the finished roast. For Kenya AA, we have chosen to focus on origin, freshness, and fruitiness, but when you buy the beans green, you are the one who decides the final direction.

That is one of the great advantages of roasting coffee yourself.