La Loma

Expect notes of mint, valencia orange, banana, pineapple and lemon

This month, we’re excited to welcome back one of our most liked guest roasters by far, Glitch Coffee in Tokyo, Japan!
Glitch specialises in extremely high quality coffees with distinctive flavour profiles and it is always a great joy to receive samples from them to taste when we’re looking for the next Rare coffee

The coffee we chose to feature from Glitch really stood out on the cupping table with it’s complexity and cleanliness – which we probably all agree is in place to bring some change to the heavily processed coffees!

Though make no mistake, this coffee has seen a bit different processing method too! The coffee comes from Finca La Loma in Huila, Colombia. It’s their Purple Caturra that has been taken through a process that the farmer Rodrigo Sanchez calls Tropical Washed.

Rodrigo Sanchez is the farmer behind not only La Loma but highly renowned Monteblanco. He’s been producing some delicious coffees both in Natural and Washed ways but he’s always eager to try new things, experiment and push the boundaries in making good coffee.

What he’s been experimenting for some time is a variety of “tropical” processing methods where different amounts of fruit flesh & juices from the fruits that grow around the farm and the community are added into fermentation tanks with either the cherries or the pulped coffee beans.

In the Tropical Washed process, he adds pieces of lemon, pineapple, passionfruit, orange, mango and sugar cane into the fermentation tank to create a tasty fruit punch liquid where the pulped beans ferment in.

Unlike it’s often believed, the flavour of the fruit is not transferred into the coffee directly in a fashion it would be detectable after roasting & brewing but it certainly creates an environment with loads of fructose and other components for the coffee to ferment in.

In the cup, it doesn’t really taste like you’re drinking fruit punch and not coffee but rather the flavour experience is deep, complex and all around, fun!

In the time of heated discussion around so-called “infused” coffees, we thought it would be interesting to feature a coffee where added fruits actually add into the experience rather than overpower it. Like the roaster Mr. Suzuki says, it’s an interesting territory to explore as it’s been done and accepted in beer & wine industries for such a long time, it’s probably inevitable there will be a market for tropically processed coffees.

And the ones where the added fruits over power the experience? Like in beer & wine, the market will take care of them.

Farm: Finca La Loma
Farmer: Rodrigo Sanchez Valencia
Location: Huila, Colombia
Altitude: 1650 masl.
Cultivar: Purple Caturra
Process: Tropical Washed