Colombia Risaralda Santuario – the Third Single Origin Coffee of the Crema Trekkers Americas Subscription

The third coffee for our Americas Trek 2019 single origin coffee subscription is sourced from Colombia in the Risaralda region near Santuario, produced by Red Associations. Red Associations is an initiative supported by Raw Material Coffee to facilitate a stable and sustainable community coffee industry.

REGION: Municipality of Santuario, Risaralda

PRODUCER: Red Asociacion (Red Associations)

ALTITUDE: 1,500-1,700m asl

VARIETAL: Castillo, Caturra, Colombia

PROCESS: Washed

SIZE: GRADE 15+ & Colour sorted with laser sorters

          

The Colombia Risaralda Santuario Single Origin Roasted Coffee is Perfect for Espresso, Plunger & Pour Over!

The Colombia Risaralda Santuario single origin coffee is a high-quality roasted coffee that is SOMETHING.

Tasting Notes: This sweet and balanced coffee with flavours of peach, mandarin, cocoa and a hint of nuts.

Aroma: Sweet

Flavour Strength: 8/10

Sweetness: 8/10

Body: 7/10 (Medium)

The Caturra, Colombia & Castillo Varietals & the Washed Green Bean Processing 

Castillo is a relatively new cultivar, created by Café de Colombia’s research centre Cenicafe and released for production in 2005 after more than 20 years of research and development. Today, more than 45% of Colombia’s coffee is Castillo. This varietal is known for its rust resistance and high yield, as well as its smoothness, aroma and citric acidity in the cup; often compared to Typica, Caturra and Bourbon for its similar qualities.

Caturra is a pure-line dwarf mutant of red Bourbon that has short internodes and is known for its high yield, found in 1937 in Brazil. Its leaf and fruit characteristics are similar to Bourbon varieties and can produce red or yellow cherries. Unfortunately, like Bourbon, it is known to be susceptible to all main diseases and pests.

Colombia is a Timor hybrid cultivar bred by mixing various Catimors and was released around 1985. It is known to have a resistance to leaf rust. Due to its breeding composition, it is known to be relatively unstable as a consistent cultivar. In Colombia, it has been popular to replace this coffee with Castillo, a newer cultivar released in 2005.

The washed method used by the Red Associations involves carefully sorting fully ripe cherries from non-ripe and defective cherries; pulping the coffee cherries (removing the outer skin) using a pulping machine; fermenting the seeds with the mucilage still intact for up to 48 hours, with new coffee cherries added at the 24 hour mark to provide new sugars for the saturated communities of lactic acid bacteria, Enterobacteriaceae and Bacillus; then the mucilage is ‘washed’ from the bean and it is either sundried or mechanically dried. The washed process is highly regarded as a process, popularly believed to produce a “clean” coffee, or coffee that is as close to its true flavour as possible.

          

Risaralda Santuario, Colombia Coffee Growing Region 

The Santuario is a town and municipality in Colombia’s Risaralda Department (region), located to the East of the Cordillera Occidental mountain range.

Risaralda is well known for its production of high-quality coffee, its range of altitudes and rich volcanic soil make the region ideal for coffee production. The primary economic driver of the region is agriculture, a big part of which the community coffee industry.

     

The Red Associations in Colombia 

The Red Associations was launched by Raw Material Coffee in 2017 after meeting with coffee producing groups and farmers in Colombia. The objective of the Red Associations is to address the many challenges the Colombian coffee producing industry was facing – price instability and lack of infrastructure to support the industry. It addresses these issues by supporting farming and production groups to achieve self-defined goals: “To achieve stable and sustainable prices for community coffee lots through improved quality control, shared knowledge, and a connection to the specialty coffee market.”

Working with the Colombian production chain, the Red Associations has identified a 5 step process to help support a stable and sustainable coffee industry which includes securing funding and constructing infrastructure, providing processing and grading facilities to improve quality, delivering management systems to control and track quality and costs, introduce and maintain a fixed price model, and facilitate connections between producers and roasters using internship and information programmes.

 

          

 

Images Sourced:

https://www.rawmaterial.coffee/

https://www.coffeehunter.com/the-coffee/risaralda-santuario/

https://littlecity.com/blog/2018/7/31/the-source-photos-and-thoughts-from-colmbia-july-2018

https://www.instagram.com/rawmaterial.coffee/