Elias Apio, Colombia — August 2024

AUGUST SUBSCRIPTION

Elias Apio, Colombia

We had no hesitation when it came to the subscription coffee this month. This particular coffee, produced by Elias, has been a real talking point amongst our wholesale accounts and at our cafe, Brighter Coffee. We think that it is quite easy to share coffee like Elias' due to the intense fruitiness that is easily achieved in any brew method; some other coffees you have to work a bit harder to see their complexity and nuance. For a lot of people, it's the kind of coffee that can break the barrier into the "coffee doesn't just taste like coffee" realm. It really hits that wow factor!

The way that Elias has produced this coffee gives it this type of flavour profile. The variety and farm terroir are not very big drivers for this profile. We would say that this coffee almost exclusively tastes the way it does due to its processing.

More detail on the processing:

After the coffee has been picked, it sits in the cherry for 24 hours; during this time the cherries will bruise, heat up and start fermenting. This is the part that we refer to as cherry-fermentation. To achieve further fermentation influence, Elias chose to continue doing a further fermentation step after the cherries were depulped. Once the bulk of the cherry skin and flesh had been removed from the seed, the seeds were still left to sit in piles with leftover fruit matter. They sat like that for a total of five days, which is an extremely long time to do this style of fermentation. We refer to this as a dry-fermentation process, as it is before any water is involved.

In our experience, it is these two steps that have created its deeply intense fruity and almost boozy-style characteristics. In the coffee's final processing step, it was washed of all the leftover fruit (mucilage) and then left out to dry. It is because of this last step that the coffee is still classified as a washed coffee, because it is laid out for final drying after being washed. Calling it a washed coffee, though, does not take into account the previous fermentation steps that have had a drastic impact on the coffee's flavour. This is something that you should always keep in mind when you are purchasing coffee, as coffee processing is often more complex than just 'natural' or 'washed'.

We hope you really enjoyed this crowd-pleaser of a coffee. It has been a really fun coffee to roast and a fun coffee to share.

Kindest regards,
Ben