Origin: Colombia

Overview:

Harvest:

• Antioquia: Main Oct-Jan, Mitaca Apr-Jun
• Central Huila: Jun-Nov
• Sourthern Huila: Sep-Jan
• Nariño: May-Sep

Arrival times:

December – February and September – November

Quantities:

3 – 100 bag lots. The average lot size is around 10 bags. We offer exceptional micro-lots plus we curate 50-100 bag blends at moderate pricing.

In Colombia, we seek to develop ongoing relationships with private producer groups, cooperatives and exporters, and build quality programs into our buying. We often refer to these programs as “projects” or “concepts”.

As most producers in Colombia are smallholders managing their farms and processing their own coffee, our concepts focus on both micro-lots and larger blends. The purpose of the blends is to give smaller volume producers access to the specialty market by creating bigger volume lots that match in profile, region or mission. These coffees are sourced from Huila, Tolima, and Nariño.

Additionally, we work with a single producer in Antioquia, Juan Saldarriaga. Juan is a pioneer in specialty in Antioquia, and a leader in his community of coffee growers, sharing knowledge and providing resources to bring more producers into the specialty market.

Concepts:

When we talk about «concept» coffees, we mean that these lots fall into one of the following categories.

• Recolectores

This coffee is made up of contributions from a group of different farmers in the Yacuanquer area of Nariño. These farmers are part of a group who work collectively during the harvest. With help from the local cooperative, they have been trained to only select the very best cherry. In return we pay a premium for their coffee that covers the additional costs of selective picking.

• Madremonte

This is a coffee from female producers in Huila who earn a premium for delivering quality coffees. The program is run by our partner of many years now, Coocentral. This programme gives us the chance to acknowledge the women who play a major role in coffee production throughout Colombia.

• El Divino Niño

El Divino Niño is our name for the crafted micro blends we have from the department of Huila. The farmers in Huila are small, and the deliveries of coffees can be tiny from each individual producer. In the case where there is enough volume to make a microlot of 5 bags or more, we keep them separated as single producer lot and sell them by the name of the producers. When the deliveries are smaller, we normally mix coffees from producers and flavor profiles that match up, and call the lots El Divino Niño, divided by different lot numbers.

• Juan Saldarriaga

Juan Saldarriaga is a producer, not a concept, but he is the driving force behind our Antioquia selection. Juan took over his family’s farms in 2012 with a mission to transition to specialty coffee. He planted new cultivars and invested heavily in processing infrastructure to develop new and sought-after profiles. Juan is a specialty evangelist and responsible for bringing more young producers into the specialty market, proving that Antioquia can produce more than heavy-bodied chocolatey profiles.

• Bomba de Fruta

It is not common to find coffees being produced as naturals in Colombia. However, we have been buying some natural coffees from an individual producer in Antioquia. Bomba de Fruta is a concept we created to refer to these natural lots, which literally means “fruit bomb” in Spanish. With a better understanding and knowledge of fermentation, and with ways of controlling this, we started to discuss processing coffees with producers. This allowed us to find different ways to achieve more fruit and still great coffee.

• Fruta Madura

Fruta Madura means ripe fruit, and is the concept name we have given to these ‘washed’ coffees where the cherries are left for an extended fermentation before they are pulped, washed and dried. We partner with some of our producers to create these lots in order to get even more of the fruit characteristics out of the coffee.

Harvest and post-harvest:

Picking & selection

In Colombia, coffees are picked in three to four passes, meaning the producers and pickers pick the ripe cherries in one block, then wait until there the remaining cherries begin ripening before doing another pass. It can be hard to incentivise your workers to only pick the ripe cherries as their payments are usually based on volume, and the work is harder. Even when you’re paying them extra for the effort, it can be hard to change entrenched mindsets. If a producer wants exceptional qualities they often have to follow up very closely, or hand sort the cherries after picking before they begin processing. Generally, the first and last passes produce 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 the second and third passes.

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 and send the beans directly from the pulper to the fermentation tank. The coffee can sit there from one to two days, depending on the temperature. Higher temperatures will speed up the fermentation process, and lower temperature will slow it down. Some producers do intermediate rinsing with water, which can also help them control the process.

Wet fermentation

Some producers use the wet fermentation method, meaning they add water to the tank after pulping. Some of the best coffees we have tasted in Colombia have been fermented this way. They often change the water numerous times, which will both slow down the fermentation time and provide a bigger window between properly fermented and over fermented. It also helps uniformity as producers can skim off the floaters during the rinse and get a better selection.

Washing and grading

Methods for washing and grading vary widely. Some producers have channels, some don’t. The channels are often short, and they don’t require huge amount of water. Producers normally stir the coffee in the channels before they remove floaters. Producers without channels commonly wash the coffees in the fermentation tank and skim off the floaters before sending the coffee to the drying table.

Drying

Smallholders in regions like Huila, Tolima, Nariño usually sun-dry their coffees on roof tops or in parabolic dryers that almost work as green houses. There are many different variations and construction types, but generally they are all systems that protect the coffee from rain. In many places it can either be too hot, or too rainy and humid, often both in one day. We generally see consistently great coffees from producers who have drying systems with good ventilation that allow them to reduce the humidity of the coffee to less than 11% between 10 to 18 days.

In Antioquia it is common to use mechanical dryers. We generally don’t buy coffees dried mechanically as we so far don’t have very good experience with the flavor and shelf life related to that process.

Parchment delivery

Coffee in Colombia is a cash crop, meaning you can sell your coffees any day in big or small volumes and get direct payment in cash. Every small town in the coffee growing areas will have purchasing points for parchment, called bodegas. These can be run by local traders who resell to exporters, exporters themselves, growers associations, cooperatives or the FNC. In many cases they are located in the same place and compete to get the coffees from the growers. Most parchment buyers will assess the quality simply by looking at the physical attributes, and pay the producers based on the yield factor. They do not care about the individual flavour attributes and generally add the recently purchased coffee to the pile. Coffees from all the different producers get mixed and sold as a general “excelso” quality coffee from that region. There are exceptions, and these are the local buyers we work with.

We work with groups, exporters or cooperatives who have their own bodegas where they purchase parchment from producers that are part of the our programs. Our selected farmers often deliver very small volumes at the time, and the coffees that meet the target moisture levels, yield factor, and quality will be kept separate and cupped individually. If they score at a higher level by the local cuppers and by us, they will be approved for purchase.