![[RELEASE 121] Kindred Coffee: two Rwandans, a blend and a decaf that behaves - AllwaysCoffee](http://allways.coffee/cdn/shop/articles/release-121-kindred-coffee-two-rwandans-a-blend-and-a-decaf-that-behaves-2951041.png?v=1786416972&width=1000)
Kindred Coffee is in the rotation
An Adelaide roastery that started with no roastery. Four coffees this round, including two Rwandans of the same variety processed two different ways.
Roaster Feature
Kindred started in 2019 without a roastery. Alex and David rented other people's, booking time wherever they could get it, roasting as nomads until they could afford a room of their own. They have one now, in Adelaide, with two Probats and a small Kaffelogic they keep for sample roasts and competition coffees.
Between them that is more than 35 years in specialty coffee. Their line is "Brew Good. Do Good.", which is the sort of thing you would normally skim past, except it shows up in how they buy: long-term relationships with the same green merchants and the same farms, held for years. That is what gets a small roaster near the interesting lots instead of whatever is left over.
Four coffees land this fortnight, the whole board covered. A blend built to survive milk, two Rwandan single origins that make a decent argument with each other, and a Colombian decaf.
Milkman
Papua New Guinea · Honduras · Colombia · Blend
Kindred describe Milkman as "coffee that tastes like coffee", which is either a very low bar or exactly the right one depending on your mood. It is the blend built for milk: full body, sweetness, and a big rich chocolate profile that does not vanish the second you pour a flat white over it.
The current mix is a 50:50 split. Papua New Guinea from Arokara in the Highlands on one side, and on the other a Honduran Lempira out of the Copán region alongside Colombia Santa Monica, a single estate grown by Jairo Arcila. The PNG brings weight, the Central and South American side brings sweetness and stops it going muddy.
Strong enough to cut through milk and complex enough to drink black, which is a harder trick than it sounds. It also holds up in a stovetop or a plunger, so it is the one to get if there is more than one brewer in the house.
Inzovu
Rwanda · Red Bourbon · Washed · 1,600 MASL
Inzovu comes from smallholders working with Rwanda Trading Company, who have spent about nine years running agronomy training and have handed out somewhere near five million seedlings to replant ageing farms. Most of those farms sit between 1,700 and 2,000 metres.
It is a washed coffee, so the fruit gets stripped off and the beans are fermented and rinsed clean before they dry. No fruit sugars soaking back in, no funk. What you get instead is clarity: sparkling acidity, a silky sweetness under it, and a finish that stops cleanly rather than trailing off.
Raisins, stone fruit and brown sugar, pulled as a shot. Bright without picking a fight. It will take milk if you want it to, but it is better if you leave it alone.
Mwito
Nyamasheke, Western Province, Rwanda · Red Bourbon · Natural · 1,350 MASL
Mwito is a community washing station in Nyamasheke, out in Rwanda's Western Province near Lake Kivu. Rwanda Trading Company took it on in 2017 and organised the farmers around it neighbourhood by neighbourhood so agronomy training actually reached people. In 2019 they opened a kindergarten there that now takes more than 150 children, and there is a learning farm alongside it, fertilised with manure from cattle kept on site.
It is a remote pocket with a microclimate good enough to justify naturals and experimental lots, which is not true everywhere. This one is a natural: the cherry dries whole around the bean so the fruit sugars work their way back in. Same Red Bourbon variety as the Inzovu, processed the other way, and it tastes like a different coffee entirely.
Stone fruit and berries up front, chocolate underneath. Brewed long it opens right up, so this is the pour over and plunger pick.
EA Decaf
Montalvo, Tolima, Colombia · Caturra, Typica · Fully washed EA · 1,800 MASL
A Colombian out of Montalvo in Tolima, Caturra and Typica, grown up around 1,800 metres, then decaffeinated with ethyl acetate.
Which sounds industrial until you find out where the EA comes from: fermented molasses, off sugar cane. The green beans are soaked and steamed so the cells swell open, then bathed in the EA solution, which bonds to the caffeine and carries it out. Then they are rinsed, dried and packed. Gentle enough that the sweetness stays where it is.
Sweet brown sugar and orange citrus. It reads like a normal coffee rather than a decaf apology, which is the whole test.
Who's behind Kindred
Alex and David started Kindred in 2019 and spent the early years as nomad roasters, renting shared spaces. They have their own place now, running a Probat P5 and a P12, plus a Kaffelogic for sample roasts and competition coffees.
Every roast gets tracked and logged, and coffee is packed and dispatched the same day it comes off the roaster. That last part is the bit that matters most to us, because a subscription is only worth anything if what turns up is actually fresh.
Sourcing is relationship-based: long-term ties with green merchants and farms, which is how they get near small producers messing about with carbonic maceration, anaerobic and extended ferments. The same relationships keep the year-round coffees consistent, which is the less glamorous half of the job and arguably the harder one.
An Adelaide roastery started in 2019 by Alex and David, with more than 35 years of specialty coffee between them. Two Probats, every roast logged, and coffee packed and dispatched the day it is roasted.
Kindred Coffee is in the rotation now
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