Tag: Colombia
Stumptown Coffee Roasters Colombia El Jordan
Prior to us going on our totally awesome and relaxing vacation, most of the coffee that I had been drinking I had roasted myself. This past Christmas Erin had gotten me a home-roasting machine and a few pounds of green beans. But it wasn’t until July that I really got the hang of home-roasting and felt like the coffee I was making was pretty good. And since green beans are so inexpensive relative to roasted coffee, a few pounds went a long way.
Next thing I knew, I hadn’t bought coffee from any of my favorite roasters for a while. But when we were in Portland I couldn’t resist the chance to pick up some freshly roasted coffee from Stumptown. And since we were on vacation, I decided to branch out from my recent African-coffee-obsession and picked up this Latin American coffee. I couldn’t really resist Stumptown’s tasting notes.
The beans making up this lot of coffee are all from farms that are members of two cooperatives, APCEJOR and ACEDGA. The farms are located in central-western Colombia in the municipality of Planadas, in the Tolima province, just a bit south of the Nevado del Tolima volcano, a 5200 foot tall mountain that last erupted in 1943. The lot includes beans that were harvested from each day of the harvest season, all of which were grown at an altitude of 1500-1800 meters, and includes the Caturra, Typica, and Colombia varietals.
After harvesting, the cherries are de-pulped using hand-cranked machines. They are then left to ferment for 12-16 hours before being washed and laid out to dry on parabolic drying beds. These are long, rectangular structures mildly similar to greenhouses, except that they are open on both ends. The beans are laid out on raised plastic mats that have holes in the bottom to allow the moisture to escape. The drying process typically takes 7-14 days, until the moisture level in the beans reaches 10-12%. This drying system is common on all but large-scale farms in Colombia, and has the unique benefit of freeing the growers from having to move the coffee in the event of rain.
Because I hadn’t had any Latin American coffees, with their typically brighter more citrusy flavor profile, in a while, I was looking forward to digging into this bag of coffee. And let me tell you, a cup of this first thing in the morning really woke up my senses.
The nose has flavors of figs, toast, cinnamon. The palate leads off with bright, sparkling acidity that complements the flavors of cherry stones, orange rinds, lemongrass and – curiously – toasted marshmallows. Underscoring these flavors is a slightly heavy undercurrent of caramel. The finish is the where the citrus flavors really blossom though, carrying bright notes of oranges and lemons through a long, slow crescendo.
A very nice coffee, highly enjoyable and a perfect complement to the cooler mornings that we’ve had of late. As obsessed as I’ve been with African coffees, I wasn’t too far gone to really enjoy and appreciate this lot. Definitely recommended.
P.S. This is my 100th post, which I think is pretty cool. I began writing this as a lark almost a year ago, and while it really still is a lark (I don’t think anyone reads it but me), I get a real kick from writing here. And I think it’s especially cool that a Stumptown coffee was the subject of my 100th post, since it’s companies like them that really inspire to think so much about these topics!
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Barrington Coffee Colombian Mesa de los Santos Don Telmo Reserva Especial
Mesa de los Santos is a coffee farm located in Bucaramanga, Colombia, and is owned by the family of Oswaldo Acevedo who have been growing coffee here since 1872. This is a single-origin coffee that you can find on the market from several roasters, and I’ve seen it from Terroir in the past as well as Great Barrington (of course, I more easily knew that Terroir’s Colombian was from Mesa de los Santos, whereas with Great Barrington the packaging didn’t indicate this at all, but I’ve beat this drum before). In fact, this is certainly one of the more prominent farms worldwide producing single-origin coffees and shipping them worldwide, as evidenced by the number of roasters selling their coffee as well as the rather extensive website that they’ve setup to educate consumers.
There are two particularly notable elements regarding this farm. The first is the extent of their efforts to reduce the ecological impact of their coffee-growing activities. The coffees are all shade grown as part of an effort to make the farm’s environment as bird-friendly as possible while gradually reforesting the area. As proof of this, you can find on their website a list of the many bird species that have been sighted on the farm as well as the number of shade tree varieties and their steady growth in numbers since 1995. While these efforts are not wholly unique in the coffee world, the level of their effort certainly stands out.
The second notable element is that 100% of the coffee is grown and processed on site. The farm has their own nursery where they raise new trees. The coffee trees are grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilizers and the farm is certified by BioLatina and the Rainforest Alliance. The coffee cherries are handpicked and processed the same day. Later they are sun-dried and then dry-processed in the farm’s own mill. The sum product is a coffee whose cultivation and preparation is the result of the efforts of a group of growers who are clearly invested in producing more than just a cup of coffee, but the best and most sustainably produced cup coffee. It’s clear that they put nearly every effort in to ensuring the success of their coffees.
Learning more about a coffee farm such as this is refreshing and eye-opening. Shade-driven, bird-friendly coffee farms are getting an increasing amount of notice these days as the impact of deforestation in southern hemisphere countries on the migratory patterns and breeding grounds of bird populations becomes better documented. To see that this one farm is acknowledging this situation and in response is making such efforts, and additionally trying to make people aware of their efforts, is heartening. Coffee production is notorious for its potentially deleterious effects on the environment and even one farm’s efforts can be a huge step in the right direction.
Additionally, it is rare for a coffee grower to be able to process their coffee entirely on their own. For most coffee farmers economics simply make this impossible. Farms such as Mesa de los Santos or La Minita in Costa Rica are notable exception, and in my experience this shows in the finished product. Their coffees are superior at the very least in the sense that they are producing a consistently high-quality product, as evidenced by the consistency of these coffees as produced by the various roasters in this country. The bottom line is that their coffees are proof that the more attention to detail and supervision throughout the coffee production process that a grower can exhibit will make its presence felt in the final product, the green coffee bean.
From the first sip this was clearly an excellent coffee. One of those cases where I absent-mindedly took a sip while typing, and then had to momentarily entirely stop doing what I was doing to focus on the second sip, my attention entirely caught by what was in the cup.
This is a light roast, Barrington indicating it to be a City roast. The nose is an enticing mix of nuts, chili peppers, and blueberries. The palate is remarkable with chocolate cake, rich cocoa flavors, a hint of warm lemon curd, all underscored by a red berry acidity. The finish is medium-length and sweet with red fruits and a pleasing earthiness.
In sum, this is a really great coffee, very well-roasted by Barrington Coffee Roasters. When you add to the sheer enjoyability of drinking it the knowledge of the lengths to which the producers go to produce the beans, then the result is a top-shelf coffee. So even though I continue to find a certain disappointment in Barrington’s disinterest in marketing the unique products they’re offering, in this case that’s only the most minor of irritants, overcome by how easy this coffee is to enjoy.
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Gimme! Coffee Colombia Las Mingas
This is one of Gimme! Coffee’s relationship coffees. This is not a single-farm coffee, but is from a collection of farmers involved in the Las Mingas Project in Narino, Colombia. In the past, Terroir Coffee has sold coffee from one of the specific growers of this group of farms, Maria Santos.
I’ve been drinking this coffee for about a week now, and I’m still not sure what I think of it. At first, it didn’t do much for me. It struck me as very coarse and not very bright tasting.
After a few days of drinking it regularly though, it’s beginning to open up to me, or perhaps vice versa. In general, it’s not one of my favorite Gimme! coffees thus far, but I’m beginning to enjoy it. The nose is very earthy and somewhat chocolatey. The taste is all right, with some milk chocolate and some soft fruitiness at the end. That fruit, almost like grapefruit, carries through on the finish accompanied by a subtle sweetness. The acidity is not very bright, instead coming through pretty soft. I really do like the finish though.
This coffee is tasty in a very subtle way. It’s grown on me quite a bit thus far, and I have about 1/2 a pound left, so I’ll be interested to see what I think about it after another few days.
Gimme! refers to this as a “Relationship Coffee“, as opposed to the term “Direct Trade Coffee” that is used by Intelligentsia and Stumptown. I think that’s an interesting choice of words. Does it mean anything different? At this point, I don’t think it does.
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