Letty Bermudez

We’re so happy to welcome back two of our old friends for this month’s Rare coffee; Manhattan Coffee Roasters in Netherlands and Diego Bermudez of El Paraíso in Colombia!

We’re proud to present to you a profile that Manhattan calls Letty Bermudez.

FUN FACT: Manhattan names their coffees after the producer whenever it’s possible but as they already had coffee with Diego’s name, they started naming coffees of this project after his children; Letty is the name of Diego’s youngest daughter.

Back in 2018, coffees from El Paraíso caught my eye for the first time in National Brewers Cups around Nordics, in Finland especially. Unlike any other coffees I had ever tasted, they had this distinct floral and berry-like aroma that scored extremely well on WBrC score sheet. Ever since then, I’ve been a bit of a collector of Diego’s coffees and the ones they’ve created together with Manhattan are the grand cru of these magical experiences. I am SO happy to be finally able to share one of these coffees with you!

The story goes more or less like this: after tasting Diego’s coffees, Ben from Manhattan roastery had a short discussion with Diego. He congratulated him for doing an excellent job with fermenting the coffee and whether it would be possible to commission a lot of Geisha processed in the same way but also taken as far as Diego would dare with the fermentation. The deal was done and the result is about to fall into your mailbox any day now!

Ok, that processing method name is a mouthful! But in reality, that’s probably the easiest & most straightforward way to describe what we have here. Here’s how Manhattan describes it on their website:
“ The sample of Letty Bermudez was one of the most insane geisha’s that has ever been on our cupping table at MCR. The processing is a combination of aerobic (60 hours in a pressurised tank), anaerobic (36 hours in mucilage at 18c with the addition of Leuconostoc bacteria), thermal shock and the Enigma dryer (a circular drying system) for 29 hours reaching a final humidity of 10%.”

What makes Diego’s coffees to stand out among other natural & anaerobic processings is his skillset of using the combination of different fermenting methods in different stages of the processing. The thermal shock means that he uses water of different temperatures to slow down or in some cases to stop the fermentation process at the exact stage he wants to. Enigma dryer is a mechanical drying tool that obviously removes a lot of the variables that go into solar drying or other traditional methods.

All in all, this coffee is a great example of a work of the Master that is Diego Samuel Bermudez.
Expect notes of peach ice tea, milky oolong, mango and buttery mouthfeel.

Farm: El Paraíso
Farmer: Diego Samuel Bermudez
Location: Cauca, Colombia
Altitude: 1960 masl.
Cultivar: Geisha
Process: Double Fermentation Thermal Shock