Bulaago Natural | Uganda | Espresso

TLDR: our first taste of this had us in awe. Such incredible fruit, so sweet, and insanely expressive. We absolutely had to have it! We’re honoured to get to share this stunning coffee with you, from a super remote area of Uganda, grown, processed, and roasted with so so much love. Enjoy.

 

An isolated community steeped in a long history of producing coffee. Bulaago is hard to reach at the best of times, but unseasonal rains make this impossible. The only road in and out is functionally a gorge, slowly carved out over hundreds of years by water. This further isolates the rural community and selfishly, makes transporting coffee infinitely more difficult. A common solution adopted is to use Boda Boda, or small motorcycles to transport bags of coffee chery down the mountain where it can be processed. The 100kg sacks of cherry are balanced on each motorcycle and carefully ridden down a river. Other than the logistical hurdles, Bulaago is an ideal coffee growing region with fertile slopes, lots of sun and enough water at one of the highest elevations on Mt Elgon. The Bulaago site is managed by young Kasim, who started as a casual labourer at the Muyanda site during Zukuka Bora’s infancy. Kasim travels hours from his home and family each week for the duration of the harvest, navigating different regions' customs and language barriers. This year Bulaago had over 200 contributing producers who also might have farms with other crops or cattle.

All of the coffee produced by Zukuka Bora starts the same way. In harvest the buying stations for each region are open on certain days of the week and the producers in the community will bring their ripe cherry ready for sorting and payment. The coffee will be visually inspected first, spread thin and approved by the site manager before moving to the flotation tank. The coffee that floats is returned to the producer along with the coffee removed when visually inspected. The coffee that makes the cut is recorded and the producer paid on the spot in cash. The coffee returned is often processed at home and sold as parchment to other dry mills less focused on quality. A bonus payment is made 4-5 months later in the hungry season when no cash crops are growing and the coffee has reached its destination and Zukuka Bora has been paid by roasters for the season.

This coffee got loads of love in the roaster, and it came out singing! With so much fruit, sweetness, and joy, this is a truly memorable coffee, and one that we are honoured to be able to share. We kept things light enough to enjoy a clean cup, even from a natural process, but developed enough to give some sweet syrupy joy.

We start with the same recipe for all of our espresso coffees:
 

• 20g dose
• 45g yield
• 30 seconds

 

From here we will tweak things to get the flavours to highlight things we like. Use this as your starting point and go wild!

 

Note: some domestic espresso machines can’t use a 20g dose. Please always follow your manufacturers instructions to avoid damaging your equipment.