Pepe Jijón

Once again some interesting coffee that Ben Morrow from Manhattan Coffee Roasters has been able to dig up. This is so good! But what makes it super interesting is the bean variety: Typica Mejorada. And like that was not enough, it’s process is tyOxidator. Read, brew and enjoy!

Farm: Finca Soledad
Farmer: Pepe Jijón
Location: Ecuador, Intag Valley, Imbabur
Altitude:   1515 m
Varietal:  Typica Mejorada
Process: Washed, Tyoxidator

Expect notes of: Hibiscus, clementine, cotton candy

After working as a Mountain Guide Pepe went on a mission to fully explore the planet, he visited over 100 countries. Impressively, he successfully climbed the seven summits solo.

After so much travel he longed for a calm introspection in a natural piece of land he would eventually call home, ‘Intag Valley’. On his farm Finca Soledad, he grows Typica mejorada, Sydra and Geisha. The farm itself is extremely small for coffee production (approximately 4 hectares) so we are very lucky to not only have this lot, but also all of the tyOxidator-washed processed coffees from Pepe.

Typica Mejorada is one of the two varieties which were propagated after someone leaked some of the genetic material out of the Ecuadorian Coffee Research Lab. The story goes that of all the seeds that were taken that day, 2 of them showed promise both in production and in cup profile. One of them was partly identified to look like Typica but with a much more vibrant and complex profile, which is roughly where the name comes from. World coffee research identified Typica Mejorada as an Ethiopian landrace coffee but it’s hard to quantify if all of the Mejorada now found in Ecuador is the same as that sample.

The tyOxidator processing method is a variation of the washed method. First, the coffee is left to ferment aerobically in the open environment to promote an oxidated fermentation. The coffee is then pulped and fermented in a sealed tank for 48 hours in its mucilage before being washed, then dried in both indirect and direct sunlight for 20 days.

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