Holiday Honey - Pink Bourbon Honey - Colombia

Happy Holidays everyone! This year we are doing things a little bit differently, releasing 3 different holiday coffees! All three have special connections to us and tell stories of three amazing people that have had incredible impacts on us not only as coffee professionals, but as people.

This coffee is one that we have been particularly excited about since our last visit to Nariño to visit Gabriel Torres and his brother Frank at their farms La Casa and La Indonesia.  Gabriel is an incredibly passionate producer, not just of his coffee but of bees! This Pink Bourbon utilizes the honey he produces as a fermentation starter. Gabriel and the team begin harvest when the cherries hit an average of Brix level of 22° before float sorting to remove impurities.  Following sorting the cherries are placed into blue tanks to undergo 24 hours of dry fermentation.  Stage two of fermentation is where ts all gets interesting.  After a partial depulping, Gabriel adds a small amount of his own honey to act as a fermentation starter, continuing a wet fermentation for 72 hours.  Coffee is then dried on raised beds do 20-25 days with a target moisture level of 10%.  

Gabriel is so inspiring to us, when he was describing this process at the cupping table in Arboleda he emphasized the importance of his bees to the farm and the local ecosystem.  He is passionate about environmental sustainability, and has worked incredibly hard with his brothers to promote biodiversity on their own farm as well as the farms of their community members.  

To us this coffee tastes like strawberry compote, apricot, pie crust and white florals.