The Story of Kiriga Estate: A Legacy Brewed in Murang’a
The first coffee bush at Kiriga Estate was planted around 1954 by colonial settlers. At about the same time, less than ten kilometres away along the same Kigio road, a young boy named Aloysius Gakunga – son of Senior Chief Ndungíu Kagori, chief for the larger Murang'a county – was helping his father plant the area's first coffee seedling. The village was Gaitegi, Murang'a Location 1 (known locally as Loco One). A love affair with coffee had begun.
Years passed, and the boy grew up. Riding his bicycle along Kigio road, past the vast, well-established coffee estates that lined the route, he made himself a promise: one day, he'd own one of them.
He realised that dream in 1976.
Mr A. N. Gakunga sadly passed away in July 2014. By that time, he'd already passed his love of coffee – and the mantle of Kiriga – on to his second child and eldest son, Dr Brian Ndungíu Gakunga. In Kikuyu cultural naming tradition, Brian carries the name of his grandfather, the same Senior Chief Ndungíu who planted that first seedling. It's a fitting thread of continuity for an estate built on family legacy.
More than a farmer
Brian is a well-known figure in Kenyan coffee circles – and his influence stretches well beyond the boundaries of Kiriga. He's a founding member and former long-serving Honorary Secretary of the Kenya Coffee Producers Association (KCPA), a national farmers' organisation that represents the economic and social interests of coffee producers across Kenya's 31 coffee-growing counties. The KCPA's roots trace back to 1934 and the Kenya Coffee Association, though its current form was established in 2009 following a merger of the Kenya Coffee Growers Association and the Kenya Coffee Producers and Employers Association. Brian was instrumental in shaping that unified voice for farmers.
He also served as a Board Member and Chairman of the Transitional Exchange Committee at the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE) – operationally, the Chairman of the exchange itself. The NCE is the central auction through which the vast majority of Kenyan coffee is traded, and has been the backbone of the country's coffee commerce since the first auction was held in 1935. The exchange has since gone digital, with a real-time cloud-based bidding platform replacing the old physical trading floor, and recently launched an ambitious 2026–2030 strategic plan focused on transparency, technology and better farmer outcomes.
Today, Brian is the Founding Chairman of the Africa Coffee Farmers' Network, an organisation representing the interests of coffee farmers across the continent. Its core mission is straightforward but urgent: improve earnings for smallholder farmers, break the cycle of poverty, and facilitate more direct sales channels. When it comes to advocating for the people who actually grow the coffee, Brian has consistently been at the table.
The estate
Kiriga sits between 1,550 and 1,650 metres above sea level, roughly five kilometres from Thika town – an industrial hub in Kenya's central highlands, about 50 kilometres northeast of Nairobi. It's just four kilometres from the historic Blue Post Hotel, a colonial-era landmark built in 1908 that sits dramatically between the Chania and Thika waterfalls. The Chania River, which serves as the natural border between Murang'a and Kiambu counties, is also a vital water source for the estate.
Administratively, Kiriga falls within the Gatanga constituency of Murang'a County. The estate spans approximately 130 acres, with around 54 hectares under coffee cultivation – predominantly planted with SL28, the variety that has defined Kenyan specialty coffee for the best part of a century.
The varieties
SL28 – the flagship
SL28 is the crown jewel of Kenyan coffee. It was selected in 1935 at the Scott Agricultural Laboratories (now the National Agricultural Laboratories in Kabete) from a single tree within a population known as Tanganyika Drought Resistant – material originally collected from Tanzania in 1931 by A.D. Trench, the senior coffee officer at Scott Labs. Recent genetic testing has confirmed SL28 belongs to the Bourbon family, and it's renowned for producing coffees with bright acidity, full body, and complex fruity character. Think blackcurrant, citrus, sometimes wine-like depth – the hallmarks of top-tier Kenyan coffee.
SL28 trees are tall, with green-tipped leaves and notably deep root systems that give them impressive drought tolerance. There are SL28 trees across Kenya that are 60 to 80 years old and still productive – a quality known as rusticity, meaning the variety can be left largely untended and still bounce back. The trade-off is susceptibility to coffee leaf rust and coffee berry disease (CBD), which demands careful farm management. At Kiriga, many of the SL28 trees are between 50 and 70 years old, and they remain the backbone of the estate's production.
Ruiru 11 – the resilient hybrid
Ruiru 11 was released in 1985 by the Coffee Research Foundation in Ruiru, developed in response to devastating outbreaks of CBD that had been ravaging Kenyan coffee since the late 1960s – at its worst, destroying up to 60% of some harvests. It's a compact, high-yielding F1 hybrid that combines quality traits from SL28 and SL34 with disease resistance drawn from Timor Hybrid and other resistant material.
The trees are smaller and more manageable than SL28, allowing for denser planting – roughly 2,500 trees per hectare compared to around 1,330 for SL varieties. They can come into production within a year and a half. While the cup quality is generally good, it doesn't always reach the dizzying complexity of SL28, which is why Kiriga maintains a thoughtful balance between the two. The estate has an estimated two hectares planted with Ruiru 11.
K7 – the steady hand
K7 was selected from French Mission coffee at Legetet Estate in Muhoroni during the same era as the SL varieties. It shares many characteristics with SL28 – good cup quality, deep roots, drought tolerance – but has a trick that the other traditional Kenyan varieties lack: resistance to some races of coffee leaf rust and partial resistance to CBD. That makes it better suited to lower altitudes where leaf rust is more prevalent, though it also performs well at Kiriga's elevation.
The cup profile tends to be a touch more subtle than the acidity-rich SLs – milder acidity, fuller body. At Kiriga, K7 is grown in smaller quantities but plays an important role in maintaining genetic diversity and resilience across the estate.
Batian – the new generation
Batian is the newest addition to Kiriga's lineup. Released on 8 September 2010 by the Coffee Research Institute (CRI) in Ruiru, it's named after the highest peak on Mount Kenya – a fitting aspiration. Batian is a composite variety bred through intensive backcrossing to traditional varieties, with a genetic makeup that reads like a greatest hits of Kenyan coffee: SL28, SL34, Rume Sudan, N39, K7, SL4 and the Timor Hybrid.
The result is a tall plant with vegetative features similar to SL28, resistance to both CBD and leaf rust, and the ability to come into production in just two years. The beans are large and bold, and in the cup, Batian has shown it can hold its own alongside the SL varieties – bright, juicy acidity with complex fruit notes and a clean finish. It's still a relatively young variety, and it requires specific pruning methods due to significant vegetative growth, but early results at Kiriga have been promising. Batian represents the kind of forward-thinking approach that defines the estate: honouring tradition while embracing what comes next.
Around 60% of Kiriga's total production grades as AA or AB – the largest and most sought-after screen sizes in Kenyan coffee – reflecting the estate's consistent commitment to quality.
From cherry to parchment
Everything at Kiriga happens on-site. The estate operates a fully integrated wet mill, handling cherry selection, disc pulping, fermentation, washing and drying on raised African beds – the traditional Kenyan washed method, where a double fermentation and extended soaking period draws out the bright acidity and cup clarity the origin is celebrated for.
Once processed, Kiriga delivers both parchment coffee and Mbuni (naturally dried cherries) to a commercial dry mill for hulling and grading, preparing the beans for sale at the Nairobi Coffee Exchange or through direct channels.
In 2015, the estate undertook a bold rejuvenation initiative, removing over 40% of the old coffee heads – well above the recommended 25% – to encourage new growth. It was a brave call: yields dropped in the short term, but the payoff was bolder, more flavourful coffee with what Brian describes as the signature "Kiriga characteristics."
More recently, Brian and wet mill manager Jorge have been developing the estate's first anaerobic natural lot – a significant departure from the washed coffees Kenya is traditionally known for. It's the kind of experimental processing that's increasingly emerging across Kenyan estates, and it signals Kiriga's willingness to explore new ways of expressing its terroir.
A shifting harvest
One of the more interesting developments at Kiriga in recent years has been a deliberate shift in harvest timing. Kenya experiences two harvest seasons – an early crop (June to August) and a main crop (October to December). Historically, the main crop has been considered superior in both quality and volume. But Kiriga has moved its focus almost entirely to the early crop, driven by the estate's unique environmental conditions and the age and character of its trees. The main crop now accounts for only a very small portion of production. It's an unconventional move, but Kiriga has adapted well – ensuring the early crop lives up to the quality standards usually associated with main crop coffees.
More than just coffee
Kiriga is a diversified agricultural operation. Alongside the coffee, the estate raises shoats (that's sheep and goats, for the uninitiated), maintains a dairy herd, and has the potential for fish farming. The dairy also supports a local preschool on the estate, ensuring children have access to fresh milk – a small but telling detail about how the Gakunga family views their responsibility to the community around them.
The estate is occasionally visited by a pair of hippos and is home to a family of monkeys and a rich variety of birdlife, adding a layer of ecological character to the farm. Despite the high cost of electricity, Kiriga irrigates all its coffee trees during the dry season – a commitment to quality that many estates in the region have chosen not to match.
Holding ground
The landscape around Kiriga has changed significantly. Many of the surrounding coffee estates have been sold off and converted to housing developments, flower farms and macadamia plantations. It's a pattern playing out across Kenya's central highlands, where urbanisation is steadily reshaping what was once pure coffee country.
Kiriga has held its ground. And while the loss of neighbouring farms presents a long-term challenge, in the short term it has created an unexpected silver lining: a larger pool of skilled coffee pickers, many of whom previously worked on those neighbouring estates, are now available for seasonal work at Kiriga.
In a region where coffee's future is anything but certain, Kiriga Estate stands as a quiet statement of intent. Three generations of the Gakunga family. Seventy years of coffee. A producer who doesn't just farm the stuff – he's spent his career fighting for the farmers who grow it.
