Christmas Brews – Week #2
Available until Wednesday 17th December 

Variedad Colombia, tabi, and castillo lot from Carlos’s El Canal and EL Cajón parcels in the township of Naranjal Alto at 2100 masl.

Carlos belongs to the Cultivando Futuro association, a group that began with the support of the Social Group Foundation in 2019. They initially surveyed almost 2,000 producers before identifying the 28 founding members who all value hard work to improve livelihoods. The group offers services to members, including loans to purchase fertilizers, a lending library with specialized farm tools to share with one another, collective transportation to move coffee more efficiently, and a  centralized warehouse and cupping lab, staffed by a member who has been trained as a cupper. The group has established themselves in the last five years, even supporting several smaller associations that are more further geographically isolated by coaching those producers who are newer to coffee production as they figure out processing best practices.

Carlos’s 2.5 hectare farm is located across the canyon from the town of Buesaco, and he manages 4 separate parcels with his father and his wife Yenni Valencia. Carlos takes care of the field work and coffee processing, and Yenni is in charge of housework, preparing the 6 farmworkers’ meals, and the drying processes. The farm has avocado, banana, and leucaena as shade on his farm, and the farm has a stream running through, as well as a forest- his soils are richer because of the natural biodiversity on his farm. Carlos also manages vermiculture, which produces 8,000 kg of fertilizer.

Carlos joined the Cultivando Futuro association in 2019, and in September 2024 he began training in a “Cafés de punto” program at the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, which focuses on fermentation processes and agronomic field management. Carlos says that producing specialty coffee means “a lot of discipline and love for the product- you have to lose first to get a good result”. He has been through his share of loss- earlier in his journey, he lost a whole lot when mold developed during the drying process.

Carlos and the six farm workers select ripe cherries, and first float them in a cement tank on the farm to sort away defective beans and over-ripe cherries. From there, the cherries undergo their initial fermentation process for 48 hours in sealed plastic bags. From there, the coffee is de-pulped and left to ferment in mucilage in a small, open tank- it’s left there for around 48 hours depending on the climate and the batch volume (larger volumes produce more heat and ferment faster).

This honey batch is then taken with no washing directly in the beds in Carlos’s dryer where special care is taken during the first few days to prevent clumping of the sticky parchment. It takes about 15 days to dry a honey batch.

This is only the second year that Carlos has produced honey. He indicates that he is still in the process of learning and improving his techniques to reach high quality standards. Carlos further conveys that this process involves some difficulties, mostly related to climate and drying space, even if we think he’s nailed it this year 

PRICING TRANSPARENCY
We purchased parchment coffee directly from Cultivando Futuro, and pesos are transferred straight to their bank account upon receipt of parchment at our chosen mill; we pay for transport from Nariño to the mill. We paid 2,562,500 pesos per carga (125 kilos of parchment coffee, this is the unit farmers sell their coffee in) for these lots.  For context, here is a link to the daily carga market price:
https://www.federaciondecafeteros.org/static/files/precio_cafe.pdf