Espresso Roast – Nestor Lasso Colombia El Diviso

This coffee comes from 24 year old producer Nestor Lasso and the El Diviso farm. The farm covers an 18 hectare area comprised of 15 ha of coffee and 2 ha of forest area. The farm carries great diversity of varietals, currently home to Caturra, Colombia, Castillo, Tabi, Pink Bourbon, Red Bourbon, Yellow Bourbon, Bourbon Ají, Caturra Chiroso, Geisha, Sidra, Java, Pacamara. Nestor is using fully washed, semi washed and natural methods and uses parabolic dryers as well as raised African beds and some mechanical drying. 80,000 coffee trees grow here at a range of 1700-1850 metres. Producer Nestor says, “We are the third generation that has been growing coffee. Our grandfather, José Uribe, was the founder of the farm El Diviso. With the work of all the family and constant savings we were able to build the infrastructure to process differentiated coffees; searching for better quality, both in coffee and our lives. After a long trial and error period we managed to standardise different processes, getting a better income in order to plant new varieties that allowed us to have better quality. One of our dreams is to produce specialty coffee that reaches all the world.” For this natural process coffee, the process starts by picking cherries that are at the optimal ripeness, where they need to be between 24 and 26° Brix. The coffee collected by the pickers is evaluated in order to decide whether it can or cannot be used for this process. Additionally, the cherries of lower quality are separated. The coffee is then stored during 48 hours in plastic jars or until the Ph=4.5. The coffee is floated in order to get rid of void and impure cherries. This first water contact is done with cold/ambient temperature water. Thermal shock: the cherries go through a 50° Celsius thermal shock before being stored in jars where an anaerobic fermentation phase begins. Saccharomyces cerevisiae (T58 type) yeast is added during this fermentation (35° Celsius during 80 hours). This yeast is commonly used in beer breweries. A 1:5 ratio is used (1g of yeast to 5kg of cherry) Drying: the coffee is moved to a mechanical drying system in order to dehydrate the cherries as much as possible in a quick way. Last, the coffee is placed in African drying beds for approximately 15 days or until target humidity is reached.