How coffee is processed in the villages of Uganda

Community tourism

Lets see how coffee is processed in the villages of Uganda. On a trip to Sipi Falls in September a village walk included a visit to a local families home to see how coffee is processed in a Ugandan village for the daily use in a village home. Coffee one of the big cash crops in Uganda and the type of coffee that is grown in the area of Sipi Falls is called Bugisu Arabica coffee.

We started our village walk from the lodge we were staying at and could enjoy beautiful scenery. After a short walk on the main road we turned off from it and walked along a path going through a coffee plantation. This plantation belonged to the family we were going to visit. And when reaching their home we were met by a teenage son who had just gotten back from school and now was ready to show us how he processes the coffee the family drinks. On the coffee plants surrounding the house we could see the coffee beans growing and in a corner of the yard were the rests after shelling of the beans. We were to follow the process from the stage of the first grinding of the beans learning how coffee is processed in the villages of Uganda.

Arabica coffee beans in Uganda

Shells from the coffee beans

The home of the family we visited

Coffee beans before the first grinding

The dry beans that at this stage before roasting are pale were poured in to a wooden mortar. The son showed us the technique and we were then allowed to give it a try. The aim now was not to crush the beans but to get the husks to loosen so that they could easily be rinsed out. The next step was to sort out the husks. This was done first by pouring the beans on a tray and tossing them up in the air so that the husks flew away and then the final remains were taken away by rinsing by hand.