Bean Shop Colombia Coffee

Medium Roast. Gingerbread, apricot, honey. A beautiful aroma of amaretto and honeycomb on grinding with sweet plum notes and a soft clementine acidity. A smooth and satisfying cup with depth of body and a nutty and balanced flavour. This Castillo bean is grown in the San Lorenzo reservation in the Cacao region of Colombia at 1800 masl.  The farmer, Sr Miguel Angel is a part of the Nasa ethnic group, one of 84 different communities given special status an Colombia and living within a reservation.  He retains the Nasayuwe tongue, a language spoken by approximately 80,000 people, mainly in the Cauca region, and his farm is located in the village of Narciso to the north of Popayan, the capital of Cauca.  He has a wife and a son. The men and women of the family hand pick the ripe cherries, they are then de-pulped and fermented for 14 hours, washed with clean water four times and shaken. They are then dried in a parabolic solar dryer to 11.5% moisture content, packed in sacks of 41kg of fibre and carried to the local collection site to then be transported to the central warehouse of CENCOIC in Popayan where it is dry milled, the quality tested and beans prepared for export. The coffee pulp is processed as compost and used for the banana and fruit trees.  The mucilage and water with mucilage is processed and reused as bio-fertiliser for the coffee plants.  Other than the eponymous walnut, the farm also grows guamo, tachuelo, avocado, mango, papaya, lemon and banana, all adding to the diversity of the area. This coffee is part of the 121 Project where roasters are matched with coffee farms.  We have entered into a long-term agreement with the coffee farmer Miguel Angel Bomba of El Nogal farm. The idea of the project is to promote long-term relationships that give the farmer security and at the same time give the roaster an excellent coffee that is both sustainable and traceable. All the coffees produced under this project come from organic farms. Every year presents new challenges to farmers who are exposed to extreme variables such as the weather and price fluctuations.