KNIFE Coffee | Giko Hill Espresso - Rwanda

KNIFE Coffee — Cut Through the Ordinary.

Meet KNIFE Coffee, our first signature coffees — crafted in collaboration with our good friends at September Coffee in Ottawa, Ontario. We’ve teamed up to bring you small-batch coffee that’s as intentional and precise as the knives we stand behind.

Each lot is sourced from dedicated farmers and producers, then roasted by September to highlight clean sweetness, layered clarity, and a finish that lingers — never bitter, always honest.

It’s coffee for early mornings in the kitchen, slow afternoons at home, or that quiet moment before service starts. Nothing too fancy — just good beans, good roasting, and good people behind it.

Sharp, balanced, and true — just like a good knife.

KNIFE Coffee. Sharp, balanced, and true — just like a good knife.

Giko Hill

This is our third harvest working with the Muzo washing station and second with Giko Hill. The Muzo washing station is excellent for producing clean and sweet coffees from Rwanda, and this bourbon is roasted for milk espresso featuring a heavier body, and more developed profile that reminds us of milk chocolate and crispy red apples.

In the cup we taste milk chocolate with the sweetness of crispy red apples and almonds. This coffee has a round body with a long sweet finish and is best used for milk espresso or traditional espresso brewing.

Emmanuel Rusatira noticed a lack of support and motivational opportunities available to producers in the Gakenke District of Rwanda. He wanted to change that, not only to improve the quality of coffee being exported from the region, but to give smallholders the resources, finances, and overall support they deserved. He created the Muzo Washing Station, a centrally located washing station in the mountainous region of Rwanda, through Baho Coffee. A leader from Muzo will drive to collect coffee from all over the region, which aids producers whose farms are located too far away. The Muzo Washing Station also has an agronomist on site who provides training sessions to local producers on fertilizing, pruning, and harvesting.

Process

The first step, regardless of the process, is cherry sorting. Under shade, every cherry is sorted to ensure only the ripest are chosen and that any visibly defective cherries are removed. Next, the hand selected cherries are placed into tanks where they go through multiple rounds of flotation to separate off the defective beans. All Baho washed coffees undergo a double fermentation process. After depulping, the coffee is immediately dry fermented (placed into an open-air fermentation tank with no water) for 8 to 12 hours.