Four years ago, an email from Mamy Dioubaté in 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 quite meet his expectations. But we persevered. Today, Mamy's Robusta espresso is a blast! A dense Robusta crema, a creamy and heavy body, and notes of toffee with a lingering aftertaste characterize the espresso.
For us, coffee is about relationships. Coffee grows slowly, and developing quality requires patience. Improvements are achieved from harvest to harvest, from year to year. It's a shared learning process.
Now we can drink Mamy's Espresso together with you. And we are incredibly proud to be part of this project.
Mamy Dioubaté is a pioneer. He has a vision. Mamy wants to "make the future Robusta," as his motto goes. He supports Robusta farmers in the rural rainforest region of Guinea in improving the quality of their coffee harvest.
Meeting Mamy, exchanging ideas, and working together gives 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 serves as an example of how we want to work with coffee producers.
We have made a strong commitment to our future work with Mamy and have pre-financed a significant portion of the next harvest.
Happy New Year,
Benjamin Hohlmann
Mamys Robusta Espresso is now available in our shops:
Here Philipp and Mamy talk about the work in Guinea and the process of the last few years.
Guineas Fine Robusta Pioneer
When Mamy's email reached me four and a half years ago, I was intrigued. Coffees from West Africa, and especially from Guinea, are barely present in Europe. It was also noticeable that a doer was beginning to develop a vision.
At the time, Mamy was working on his dissertation on the "Global Coffee Value Chain" at the Free University of Berlin. He wrote to me at the time: "Local producers have serious problems exporting the coffee (especially for financial reasons)." If the quality meets European market requirements, <...> I intend to become involved commercially and export the coffee by the container load. My goal is to: (1) raise awareness of coffee; (2) shorten the value chain to just two levels (farmer -> me -> roaster); (3) reinvest the generated added value proportionally in the producer (fair and stable purchase prices) and sustainable cultivation methods, but also to scale production."
Soon the coffee sample reached me and I gave honest feedback.
"The coffee has likely lost quality during processing, from the tree to the bag. Various off-tastes that don't belong in coffee are problematic, including engine oil and fish. This could have occurred due to contamination of the coffee during drying or due to later storage. <…>"
"This may not sound optimistic, but we see opportunities. Yes, the coffee isn't yet a Fine Robusta. But that can probably be achieved through better processing. Only if you say that the processes have already been optimized and reviewed on-site, then I would say the coffee has no potential."
Much time has passed since then. Mamy founded Macenta Beans and, together with the region's producers, completely overhauled the coffee processing process. One of the most modern processing facilities in West Africa now allows Macenta Beans to develop the coffees' full potential.
Mamy believed in the quality potential of good Robustas (technically Canephoras), and we believe in Mamy. We supported his work from the very beginning, and now, together, we've launched one of the best Robusta espressos we've ever tasted.
