Cafe1959

Why do we enjoy working with Manhattan so much, you ask? Well, it’s pretty simple. Their roaster and person in charge of green coffee buying, Ben Morrow has incredible networks with farmers and exporters all around the world and whenever we approach him asking for something good for Rare, he comes back with, like, 10 suggestions. Every – single – time!

The coffee this month is nothing short of amazing. It’s a Sidra variety that we haven’t seen in Rare in a long time. This variety is indeed quite rare and even more so if you want to find an exceptionally well processed.

But this Sidra is one of those good ones. It’s gone through an experimental triple fermentation process which we’ll talk a bit more closely below.

The coffee was grown in El Provenir, Colombia and processed by Jose Giraldo in Cafe1959.

Named after his late mother Clara Giralfo, we bring you a stunning Sidra from cafe1959. Currently run by Jose Giraldo who is a 3rd generation producer in the Giraldo family (which has been producing coffee for more than 50 years). 5 years ago after finishing the study of international marketing and logistics, he saw the opportunity to tell stories around the family’s product. His father (who had a PhD in food engenieering) was the driving force to research the behaviour on processing using different methods in the lab. Jose designed a series of his own methodology for both coffee which they grow at the family estate las Marias as well as for cherries that they buy from partner farms across Colombia.

This coffee is part of Jose’s purchasing program where he buys exotic cherries from other producers to process and sell them himself. This Sidra comes from the partner farm El Provenir where he pays a 200% premium to bring it to the cafe 1959 operation.

The process of the triple fermentation consists in picking the perfect ripe sidra cherries, which are moved in sealed tanks from Huila to the Cafe 1959 processing center in Quindio. During the first 48 hr this coffee makes a natural Carbonic Maceration as pressure builds up in the tanks in transport. This creates lixiviats (liquid runoff produced after applying pressure to the whole cherries in transport) which are collected and subjected to heat in a water warmer and then reintegrated to the tanks with the coffee. The tanks are then sealed again for 60 hours. Finally the tanks are opened for 48 hours of aerobic fermentation before they go straight to the drying room where the coffee is carefully monitored over the 30 days it’s dried.

Expect notes of peach, rose lemonade, ceylon tea
Greetings from the roaster
“Here at Manhattan coffee roasters we tend to focus on maximizing the solubility of a coffee without bringing any roast taint to the end product. There’s a few ways to do this but in essence it can only be done with a very high rate of rise spike at the beginning of a roast to achieve a cell expansion that would be far greater than a traditional roast.
This coffee is so ridiculous that there’s no real need to apply a different approach to it than any of our other products.“

– Ben Morrow, head roaster & green bean buyer

Farm: El Provenir x Cafe1959
Farmer: Jose Giraldo
Location: Quindio Colombia
Altitude: 2000 masl
Varietal: Sidra
Process: Triple Fermentation