Colombia Buesaco Huver Castillo Inoculated Anaerobic Fermented

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Colombia Buesaco Huver Castillo Inoculated Anaerobic Fermented 2024

Flavor Profile: Vanilla, candy, rose, and honey

Overview:

This is an experimental anaerobic coffee from Nariño, Colombia, produced by Huver Castillo on his farm Finca el Paseo.The flavor profile is strikingly vanilla like, super sweet and candy-like, with hints of cherry and citrus acidity and floral notes like rose and orange blossom, and a candied walnut finish.

Taste:

On the cutting edge of innovation and discipline, Huver Castillo and his family have created a captivating coffee that we are excited to share with you all. In the green coffee and on the cupping table what first caught our attention was the intense vanilla bean aromatics and taste.Interestingly, the inoculated fermentation technique has manifested into some flavors similar to a dry white wine or rosé. While vanilla is what you will likely notice first, there are interesting layers to be explored under that: florals like day lily and chamomile texturize the profile while a more botanical aftertaste of juniper lingers on the palate. The dryness of the wine-adjacent flavors and florals play together in an enticing way.Accompanying these flavors you’ll also find notes like dried raspberry, candied walnut and unsweetened acai, rounding off the experience in such a way that will make you think “what just happened?”.The flavors on pour-over mellow out compared to the cupping table in a pleasant way. You get an approachable cup, yet one that any coffee drinker could notice something special about.You might think this coffee as an espresso would turn bombastic but Alisha discovered that although it was highly distinctive it was still amiable. The vanilla flavor was especially amped up and the team particularly enjoyed it with milk. Vanilla latte without the vanilla, anyone?The dimensions of this coffee are meant to be played with and explored in the much same way as the producer explored processing on the farm – limits to be pushed and palates to be expanded. This is an uncommon coffee, and we hope you enjoy this cutting-edge take on processing by the Castillo family.

Source:

Huver Castillo got into specialty coffee production as a crisis response. The second-generation farmer recognized his family’s work was becoming unsustainable as global coffee prices cratered in 2014. 

“It was then that we began to incorporate protocols into post-harvest handling that would allow us to improve the organoleptic characteristics of our coffee,” he says. “Perseverance and discipline were our watchwords.” 

His family and farm went through years of trial and error before their first exportable harvest of specialty quality coffee in 2018. That year’s success led them down a path of further experimentation with processing… and what a wild, winding path it has turned out to be! 

To call this fermentation and processing style “experimental” is an underservice. It’s completely innovative and its results are stunning and unexpected. We’ve summarized it as “Inoculated Anaerobic Fermentation” but it’s quite a bit more complex than that name implies. Huver Castillo generously provided us with a detailed description of the undertaking, which I’ve attempted to translate for you here. 

After harvesting, the coffee cherries are floated for separation and disinfected with a 2% saline solution followed by a 36-hour fermentation in whole cherry at an average temperature of just below 80F (26C). You might rightly call this a ripening or maceration, Huver Castillo calls it “oxidizing,” to indicate that this initial transformation includes oxygen present in the environment. 

Following this short maceration period, the cherries are depulped just enough to remove the fruit but retain a decent amount of the gooey, partly fermented mucilage (Castillo calls this “baba,” which translates as slime). The sticky mucilage-covered parchment goes into a stainless-steel tank with a lactic acid bacteria inoculation and a backslop of coffee extract and microbes cultivated from the runoff (Castillo uses the term “lixiviados,” or “leachates”) of the first, whole cherry fermentation stage. This second, inoculated anaerobic fermentation lasts between 10-12 days, controlled and monitored closely using pH, Brix, and cationic exchange capacity measurements, as well as microscopic observations to count bacteria population and viability. 

When the fermentation is deemed complete, the coffee (which could be considered honey processed, as there is no final washing step) is dried mechanically at temperatures below 100F (38C).  

The team cupped this offering and selected it from a large group of microlot samples offered through the FNC (Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia, or Colombian National Coffee Growers’ Federation), who sourced the coffee from a community-based association, “Noscoffees,” which counts Huver Castillo among its leaders. 

While the FNC is many things, including an institution for education, marketing, research, and development, it is not often seen as a source of exceptional microlot coffees with the high degree of transparency and innovation we have here. Specialty coffee, particularly experimental and unconventional methods like those undertaken by Huver Castillo, will always be an uphill battle. In Castillo’s words, Noscoffee’s partnership with the FNC “allows us to obtain a fair price and recognition for our work as Colombian coffee growers who are passionate about producing quality coffee.”