Rwenzori Mountains Honey
Honey-processed arabica from the glaciated range on Uganda's Congolese border. First batch dropped at 232.3 °C with 20.9% development.
Green arrived August 2026 alongside the Yemen, and the first batch went through the roaster on 26 August. The curve is below. Tasting notes are not up yet, because the batch has not been cupped, and a flavour written before that would be a guess dressed as a note.
A second Ugandan, from a different mountain
We already roast a Mbale lot from the slopes of Mount Elgon, on the Kenyan border in the east of the country. This one comes from the opposite side: the Rwenzori range, which runs along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the west.
The Rwenzoris are unusual mountains. They are not volcanic, unlike Elgon and most of the East African highlands, but a block of much older rock pushed up along the Albertine Rift, which makes them the highest non-volcanic, non-orogenic range in the world. They carry some of the only permanent glaciers in Africa. Ptolemy’s Mountains of the Moon, the ones classical geographers put at the source of the Nile, are generally taken to be these.
The range runs about 120 km long and 65 km wide along the Congolese border, and tops out at Margherita Peak on Mount Stanley, 5,109 m. The coffee grows nowhere near that. Farms sit on the lower and middle slopes of the eastern face, in the Kasese, Bundibugyo and Kabarole districts, roughly between 1,200 and 2,200 m. The altitude is what makes arabica work in a country whose coffee exports are overwhelmingly robusta.
Two arabicas from the same country, grown on two geologically unrelated mountain ranges about 600 km apart, is a comparison we can run properly once both are roasted. That is most of why this lot came in the same order.
Honey process
The cherry is pulped to remove the skin, then dried with the mucilage still attached to the seed instead of being washed off. The sugars in that mucilage stay in contact with the bean through drying, which usually lands somewhere between a washed coffee’s clarity and a natural’s sweetness and body.
It also demands attention during drying. Mucilage left on a drying bed will ferment if it isn’t turned, so the process carries more risk than a washed coffee does, and the quality of the result depends heavily on how carefully the drying was managed.
How we roast it
First batch, run near the middle of the house profile to find out what the coffee does under settings we already understand.
Development came out at 20.9%, close to the 20.4% median on the roasting page. The drop is the part that sits high: 232.3 °C against a median of 224 °C, which is a warmer finish than most of the roster gets, and it stopped short of second crack.
Whether that is the right place for this coffee is the question the cupping answers. If it wants to move, the next batch moves and this page says so.