He has grown up on coffee, literally with his parents farm just a little way down the hill from Finca Clavellines. His farm has been operating as Organic for 4 years now, he says it is hard to get established but he thinks it is a better way. He believes in replacing the trees on his farm every 5-6 years, and is currently growing Caturra, Colombia, Tabi, Castillo and F7.

The family have made rooms in their home on the farm, so that during harvest when 30 something pickers are joining them they are able to stay on the farm. Didier’s wife and her sister are the ones preparing daily meals for all the pickers, it is a full time job!

Picking

Coffees are picked in 3-4 passes. Meaning the producers/workers pick the more or less ripe cherries in one block. Then they might wait a few weeks until it’s again a descent amount of ripe cherries to pick in that same place. Generally the first and last pass is of lower quality, and the second and third will be considered as the best, with more ripe cherries and uniform quality. When we can, we try to buy parchment harvested in these two passes.

Processing

The coffee from Tolima is generally fully washed, meaning pulped and fermented the traditional way. There is a few exceptions where farmers are using eco-pulpers with mechanical removal of mucilage, and/or are doing honeys, but it’s still not to common.

Dry fermentation

This is the most common and widely used method. The farmer will have a small beneficio, a small manual or electric pulper and a fermentation tank. They pulp the cherries in the afternoon. The coffees are going straight from the pulper in to the fermentation tank. It can sit there from one to two days, depending on the temperature. Higher temperature will speed up the fermentation process, and lower temperature will slow it down. Some producers do intermediate rinsing with water, that can also help them control the process.

Washing and grading

They normally stir the coffees in tanks or small channels before they remove the floaters. For the ones without channels it’s common to wash the coffees in the fermentation tank and skim off the floaters before it goes to the drying.

Drying

For the smallholders in regions like Tolima the coffees are commonly sun dried in parabolic dryers that almost works as green houses. The better producers have well ventilated facilities. There are many different variations and constructions, but generally they are all systems that is able to protect the coffee from rain.

We have generally seen that the producers that have constructions with good ventilation and manage to dry the coffee down to below 11% in 10 – 18 days often have very good and consistent coffees.