Four years ago, an email from Mamy Dioubaté from Guinea landed in my inbox. Mamy asked me to taste some Robusta coffee samples for him. As you can read in the short story below, the coffee didn't make the cut back then. But we stuck with it together. Today, Mamy's Robusta is a hit as an espresso! A dense Robusta crema, a creamy and heavy body, and notes of toffee with a long finish characterize this espresso.
For us, coffee is about building relationships. Coffee grows slowly, and developing quality requires patience. Improvements are made from harvest to harvest, i.e., from year to year. It is a shared learning journey.
Now we can drink Mamy's espresso together with you. And we are immensely proud to be part of this project.
Mamy Dioubaté is a pioneer. He has a vision. "Making the future of Robusta" is Mamy's motto. He works with Robusta farmers in the rural rainforest region of Guinea to improve the quality of their coffee harvests.
Meeting Mamy, our exchanges, and our collaboration give me hope for the future. Together, we are taking steps toward social, ecological, and economic improvements in the Macenta region. At the same time, this collaboration is an example of how we want to work with coffee producers.
We are strongly committed to our future work with Mamy and have pre-financed a significant portion of the next harvest.
Wishing you a wonderful end of the year,
Benjamin Hohlmann
Mamy's Robusta Espresso is now available in our shops:
Here, Philipp and Mamy talk about their work in Guinea and the process over the last few years.
Guinea's Fine Robusta Pioneer
When Mamy's email reached me four and a half years ago, it piqued my curiosity. Coffees from West Africa, and particularly from Guinea, are rarely seen in Europe. Moreover, it was clear that a go-getter was starting to develop a vision.
At that time, Mamy was working on his dissertation at the Free University of Berlin on the "Global Coffee Value Chain." He wrote to me back then: "Local producers have serious problems exporting the coffee (especially for financial reasons)." If the quality meets European market requirements, <...> I intend to get involved commercially and export the coffee by the container load. In doing so, I aim to: (1) make the coffee known; (2) shorten the value chain to just two levels (farmers -> me -> roaster); in order to (3) reinvest the generated added value proportionately into the producers (fair and stable purchase prices) and sustainable cultivation methods, but also to scale production."
The coffee sample soon reached me, and I gave honest feedback.
"The coffee has likely lost quality during the processing from tree to bag. Problematic are various off-tastes that do not belong in the coffee, including engine oil and fish. This could have happened due to contamination of the coffee during drying or through subsequent storage. <...>"
"That might not sound optimistic, but we tend to see the opportunities. Yes, the coffee is currently not yet a 'Fine Robusta.' However, this can likely be achieved through better processing. If you tell me that the processes have already been optimized and reviewed on-site, then I would say the coffee has no potential."
A lot of time has passed since then. Mamy founded Macenta Beans and, together with the producers in the region, completely overhauled the processing of the coffee. Today, one of the most modern processing facilities in West Africa allows Macenta Beans to develop the full potential of the coffee plant.
Mamy believed in the quality potential of good Robustas (technically Canephoras), and we believe in Mamy. We have supported his work from the beginning, and now we have jointly launched one of the best Robusta espressos we have tasted so far.
