Description
Importer Notes | You know you’re writing about a complicated process when you need to start with an abstract. Here goes. Edwin’s processing for this particular lot involved two distinct whole coffee cherry fermentations: one of fresh picked coffee on its own; and a second one in which the fruit was accompanied by a carefully formulated solution of coffee cherry must (a biproduct of the first fermentation) and dry cascade hops. Finally, the twice-fermented cherry is depulped and moved immediately to raised screen beds to dry, just like a traditional honey would be. Each stage adds a particular bit of uniqueness to the final coffee, so that by the end the coffee is truly one of a kind in the world.
The first fermentation was with fresh coffee cherry only, carefully hand-sorted for ripeness and consistency, washed clean, and immediately moved into 2,000kg tanks to ferment for 24 hours with limited oxygen. During a fermentation like this (which we would consider an “anaerobic maceration” of the cherry) the fruit becomes dramatically softer, sweeter, and more acetic, while also leaching out a concentrated sticky, sugary runoff–the mossto or “must”–not unlike the must from freshly smashed grapes and skins in winemaking.
After this first fermentation was complete, the fermented cherry was separated from its must and moved into much smaller tanks, of 200kg capacity each. The must was then fermented on its own, along with brewer’s yeast to inoculate the process, and ample quantities of cascade hops for flavoring. The fermented and flavored must was then mixed into the coffee cherry, at a ratio of 30mL per kilogram. The cherry and must were sealed into the smaller tanks to ferment again for 72 more hours.
In the final step the fermented cherry was lightly depulped, leaving most of the mucilage intact (similar to what a “black” honey would be in Costa Rica), and moved directly to Edwin’s greenhouse to dry on raised screen beds for 10 days.
The fully dried coffee was then conditioned for 8 days in a warehouse, allowing for humidity to stabilize inside the seeds, and then moved into GrainPro bags for long-term storage, where it is cupped numerous times over the next few weeks for quality analysis.
Edwin used an increasingly popular cultivar here, known to most roasters as Pink Bourbon, sometimes referred to in Spanish speaking countries as Rosado. It is now acknowledged to be unrelated to the colonized strains of Bourbon classic, those trees first grown in isolation on the French-occupied island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. Rosado, instead, is an Ethiopian landrace, transplanted from unknown origins, cropping up in Colombia first around a decade ago, known to its growers by its rosy-colored ripe fruits and to its roasters and cuppers by its pastel-like flavor profile, bright acidity, and gentle sweetness.
