Single Origin Blend | Colombia | Suggested for: Espresso
origin: colombia, producer: jairo lopez
quindío / pijao / 1.500 m.a.s.l. / castillo / natural (36h)
origin: colombia, producer: familia gomez
inzá / cauca / 1.990 m.a.s.l. / caturra / dried on parabolic beds
origin: colombia, producer: giovanit gutierrez
tolima / herrera / 1.700 m.a.s.l. / caturra / natural
tasting notes chocolate, fruit compote, dried plum, cinnamon
Owned for 80 years by the family Lopez, the farm passed on to four brothers in 2005, until it was subsequently divided in two. Since 2019 Jario Lopez is the only owner of Puerto Alegre, before that he shared the farm with his brother Cesar.
The main varietal is Castillo, with small productions of Geisha and Java. Avocados and platanos are also cultivated on the farm. While avocados are planted separately, the platanos are inter-planted among the coffee trees.
Natural process. The coffee is picked at its optimal maturity and then floated intensively to remove the less dense and defected cherries. Then the coffee is hand sorted by women, to remove the possible unripened cherries. After this the coffee is placed in GrainPro bags and fermented for around 36-40hrs, depending on the Brix content and PH measurement. The coffee is dried after that time, or de-pulped and processed as a honey.
The coffee is dried on a big tunnel constructed specially to dry naturals. The structure has the possibility to have a constant air stream that helps to prevent mold growth on the coffee. Recently Jairo Lopez added UV lights at night to avoid the re-humidification of the cherry since the local relative humidity is high.
The cherries get hand sorted at picking, later again during the drying process on the raised beds. Any other defects are removed at the milling in green up to the desired norm.
When her husband passed away over a decade ago, Isuara Martinez wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do about maintaining the family’s 6 hectare coffee farm, located in the prime coffee-growing land in the sub-municipality of Tabor in Timaná, Huila. She, herself, was already in her 50s and wasn’t up to all the work required to continue farming high quality coffee. In a development unusual in rural Colombia today, where small farms are increasingly subdivided into ever smaller parcels as they are passed onto the children of a farm’s owner, Doña Isuara’s children decided to help manage their family’s collectively.
Some 10 years on, Familia Gomez is a nice example of how coffee growing can be passed on through generations in rural Colombia. Currently, four brothers and sisters and their families (last name Gomez, after their father) manage the farm, and Doña Isuara manages her own small plot, despite her current age of over 65 years old. Alvaro, Juan, Gloria and Fabiola now live in different houses on the property, each taking care of different plots but wet processing their days’ pickings together in the farm’s old and original wet mill.
The farm was occupied by the FARC/Guerilla until 2001, then given back by the government to the Gutierrez family. Coffee production has been taken more serious at the farm since 2010, working on different processes and fermentation techniques guided by Johan’s brother and Q Grader Newerley Gutierrez who is specialized with his own farm in exotic varietals.
La Veranera produces the coffee varietals Caturra , Castillo and Colombia, and other citric fruits like oranges and lemon.
Natural Anaerobic process. The coffee is picked at its optimal maturity and then floated to remove the less dense coffee. After the coffee is floated it is placed in sealed containers for 68 hours under temperature and PH control. When the fermentation is at its targeted point, the coffee is dried in two stages.
During the first stage, the coffee is dried for 3 days on raised beds in a plastic tunnel with sun and natural airflow. Workers move the coffee every 4 hours. During the second stage, the coffee is dried in a mechanical silo for another 4 days to dry completely. The temperature in the mechanical silo is controlled and active during the day. During the night the coffee rests. This drying process is favorable to avoid over fermenting, since the cherry will keep fermenting until it reaches the ideal humidity of 10-11.5%
Cherries are hand sorted at picking, later again during the drying process on the raised beds. Any other defects are removed at the milling in green up to the desired norm.