Our latest origin-prepared super-blend, Las Estrellas de Aji (aka the Superstars of Ahi), was built to celebrate the teensy-but-delicious bourbon aji microlots offered to us by treasured members of Los Guacharos. These lots are sometimes just 50 or 100kg of parchment form coffee: too small to export on their own, but absolutely too deserving of opportunity to deprive them of centre stage.

Bourbon Ají is a relatively new coffee variety that is actually not Bourbon but an Ethiopian landrace variety. It was first “discovered” and more widely produced near the town of Bruselas, Huila. “Ají” means “chilli” and the coffee was dubbed that because the coffee cherries are long and slightly chile-shaped and ripen to a similar colour. The coffee can also have a subtle spicy character, plus high sweetness and complexity.

This lot is made up of coffee from Wilmar Munoz and German Ortiz, both of whom are super careful about their picking: they know that picking ripe cherries is the first step in producing high-scoring coffees. After picking, the cherries are placed in sealed receptacles (plastic grain-pro bags or barrels) to begin fermentation. They’re depulped 24-36 hours later. Both German and Wilmar continue to ferment the coffee in sealed vessels with one-way valves for off-gassing: these are all anaerobically fermented coffees. The coffee ferments for 36-48 hours (on average), before it’s washed. After washing, the coffee is dried- it usually takes between 2.5 – 3 weeks for the coffee to dry under low and slow conditions.

PRICING TRANSPARENCY:

We purchase parchment coffee directly from Los Guacharos members, and pesos are transferred straight to the association’s bank account upon receipt of parchment at our chosen mill. We pay for transport from Bruselas to the dry mill. We paid German and Wilmar $4,200,000 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