Our Process in Colombia

We source green coffee primarily in the areas of Huila, Cauca, Tolima, Narino and Urrao, and make visits each year to visit farms and cup coffees.

We work with a exporter and farmer who organizes farmers and provides the logistics from the local warehouses in the coffee-producing zones, through dry-milling and export.

A lot of the work happens in the cuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest…. room(s), local labs in Colombia and the main one in Medellin, as well as at our cupping room in Oakland. All told we are combing through many hundreds of samples each year to find the lots we offer.

We grade these either as clean and sweet coffees that are good enough for our single farmer or micro-regionWe use this term to denote a coffee-producing sub-region within a larger coffee area – Micro-Region is more specific coffee-producing zone. For example, if the Country for a… blends (either by farmer group or small regions). Each of these micro-lotA term that designates not only a small volume of coffee, but a lot produced separately, discreetly picked or processed to have special character. Read the full definition!:… samples represents a single farmer’s work over the period of a week or two and represents a lot of 1/2 to 5 bags of parchmentGreen coffee still in its outer shell, before dry-milling, is called Parchment coffee (pergamino). In the wet process, coffee is peeled, fermented, washed and then ready for drying… coffee.

It’s important to make a distinction between the way we work in a country like Colombia, and the majority of Colombian coffee imported into this country: Colombian coffee has been highly marketed in the US for many decades by the FNCThe FNC is the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia, the coffee association of Colombia. They fund CENICAFE research institute, which has an extensive cultivar collection., the Federacion Nacional de Cafe. 

They have been successful at equating the name Colombian Coffee with “good” coffee. This is half-true. Colombian coffee is bulked into container lots that lack clean cupClean cup refers to a coffee free of taints and defects. It does not imply sanitary cleanliness, or that coffees that are not clean (which are dirty) are… character and distinctive flavor attributes.

This is the case with all origins in fact: There are stellar Ethiopian coffees but that does not mean EthiopiaEthiopia, formerly known as Abyssinia, or a coffee cultivar: Ethiopia, or more specifically the Empire under Haile Selassie,  was known as Abyssinia. The name is Latin, derived from… coffee necessarily means good coffee. The fact that coffee is now marketed by originIn coffee talk, it refers to a coffee-producing region or country; such as, “I was just at origin.” Of course “Origin” for most product we use is not… country, sub-region, farm, farmer name, or which side of the tree they picked does not in itself guarantee good quality! 

Also, indiscriminate mixing of good and bad lots, well-processed clean coffees with over-fermented batches, or ones that might have been re-wet by rain showers when drying, results in the lowest common denominator for the entire shipment of coffee.

Is there good Colombian coffee? Absolutely, but good Colombian is rarely sold as SupremoA Colombian coffee grade referring to screen size of 17-18 screen. In the traditional bulk Arabica business, Supremo was the top grade Colombia, with Excelso one step below… or ExcelsoA Colombian coffee grade referring to screen size of 15-16. In the traditional bulk Arabica business, Excelso is a step below the large bean Supremo grade, which indicates…, a name that designates the size of the beans only and means nothing about the quality of taste. 

Grading by screen size doesn’t make sense because a larger bean does not mean better cup quality. In fact, the presence of diverse bean sizes can result in better cup quality, but not necessarily. Since we rate everything by cup quality and all coffees are judged “blind,” bean size is irrelevant and doesn’t enter into how we select coffees.