Fresh Crop: Colombia
As a society dedicated to coffee, we’re often asked how to brew high quality coffee at home on a budget, similar to what can be bought at cafes such as Brew Lab or Artisan Roast. This guide is going to come in three parts, across our next few articles, and should get you at least part of the way to becoming an artisan home barista!
The first part of the guide is dedicated to the coffee. Coffee beans are the roasted seed of the ‘Coffea’ plant. The highest quality coffee is grown at very high altitudes under exacting conditions. Coffee grown in different parts of the world comes into season at different times. For example in Colombia, the main harvest was towards the end of last year. As it takes time for coffee to be harvested, processed, shipped across the world and roasted, fresh crop Colombians are only just becoming available. Our favourites from this year’s harvest include Finca Tamana, roasted by The Barn in Berlin. This coffee is grown in the Huila district of Colombia by farmer Elias Roa, with advice from the 2004 World Barista Champion, Tim Wendelboe of Norway. This is a stunningly balanced coffee, with super sweet caramel notes alongside a red apple acidity. Another is Vitelmo Bravo from London based roaster Workshop Coffee. This is another coffee from the Huila district, which Workshop chose to name after the farmer himself, rather than his farm. Vitelmo sells the majority of his coffee at a low price to exporters to be blended, but sells his highest quality lots, grown under ideal conditions, to roasters like Workshop, to become speciality single origin coffee. This blend is fairly similar to the Finca Tamana, due to similar growing conditions, but has a slightly softer fudge sweetness and a rounder plummy acidity. Whatever coffee you buy, make sure that it is freshly roasted, and responsibly sourced. Happy brewing!
The Coffee Society