Colombia Las Palmas Watermelon Co-Ferment

This is our first ever limited release and our first co-ferment! The coffee was grown by Brayan Alvear at his farm Las Palmas in San Adolfo. It is a blend of two Arabica varieties: Colombia and Caturra. After harvest, cherries are bagged for a 48-hour anaerobic fermentation, then the beans are de-pulped and fermented for five more days. It is during this time that both fresh and dried watermelon are added to the tanks, which impart a candy-like sweetness to the beans. As coffee purists, we were not immediately sold on the concept of co-ferments, but these new experimental processing methods are a way to add value at origin and command much higher prices for coffee that otherwise may have been sold at commodity prices or blended into a community lot. The work that Brayan and our importer partners Forest Coffee have done to create this beautiful and unique lot deserves recognition and the flavor is undeniably incredible. This coffee doesn’t have any of the funky fermented notes often associated with anaerobic coffees! It’s super clean, sweet, and floral, with watermelon Jolly Rancher notes up front that lead nicely into milk chocolate and red fruit making for a really chuggable cup. This one is excellent as espresso, pour over, and as an iced pour over.

We’ve gone all out with the packaging on this one: You’ll receive 10oz of coffee in a biodegradable bag inside a custom printed box. That means there is no single use plastic here. We are also including two stickers inside the box; one classic logo print sticker and one watermelon sticker that will only be available with this limited release.

We could not market anything with a watermelon printed on the box and not immediately think of the people in Palestine. It is difficult to spend our days enjoying all these beautiful coffees while our tax dollars fund unspeakable horrors on the other side of the world. We don’t have much to give but also feel that we cannot sit idly by and be complicit in this genocide. If our contribution will help feed even one person in Gaza, we will have done something worthwhile.