Neighbors & crops
DARIELA BOLIVAR
EL ENCANTO
Village: Anatoli, Cundinamarca
Altitude: 1680 M.A.S.L
Variety: Castillo
The Profile
Dariela Bolivar is 59 years old. As her parents where traditional coffee farmers from the region, she’s been related to these crops ever since she can remember. El Encanto, her farm, was an inheritance from her parents, so it has a very special meaning. She decided to continue with the family tradition and keep growing coffee in the 0,6-hectare she now owns. At 1.680 meters above sea level, doña Dariela has 2.000 Castillo variety trees and 1.000 of Colombia.
Dariela is a mother of two offspring. Jenny Johana (35), an independent public accountant who helps her financially whenever they need some extra income; and Brayan (18) who helps her with the farm duties whenever he can. Before moving to El Encanto, Dariela used to live and work in Bogotá at big supermarket chains to earn some extra money that helped to maintain the farm economically.
Dariela used to sell her parchment coffee to the local buyers. Like the rest of the growers in our region, she had struggled with the cherry-picking and processing. Since joining our Neighbors & Crops program, Dariela has noticed a difference in her entire production process. We offer our trained team of pickers during harvest, we transport the coffee cherries to our wet mill, and because of her lack of processing infrastructure, she no longer has to find a way to process and dry her cherries.
Key Facts
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Proccesing Methods
Lactic
This kind of fermentation is classified as ‘Anaerobic’ as oxygen has minimal interaction with the cherry. Once the cherries arrive at the mill, they are hand sorted and placed in sealed tanks. With no oxygen involved, bacteria feed on carbohydrates present in the mucilage favoring a higher concentration of Lactic Acid, creating a unique profile of the resulting cup.
Honey
The Honey Process begins with a pre-fermentation stage of 45 hours at the wet mill. From here the cherries will start the de-pulping stage, passing through three stages of quality control before removing a percentage of the skin. While the drying stage, coffee will be placed in African-style raised beds for over 15 days. Due to the levels of sugar and moisture, the first days will be crucial to avoid microbial activity prolongation. Finally parchment coffee will pass through the mechanical drying machines to end up the drying process.
Mixed
This method involves a combination of stages found in lactic and acetic processing methods. First, all hand-sorted cherries will go through a short pre-fermentation step. Similar to lactic processing, the cherries are placed in airtight fermentation tanks with limited oxygen. Once removed from the tanks, we pass them through three levels of quality control before having the skin removed by a pulper machine. From there, we leave the beans resting in the fermentation tanks to undergo an acetic fermentation, agitating them from time to time. Once the process is completed, the beans are transferred to African-style raised beds to begin the drying phase.
Our Mixed Fermentation Processing produces a very balanced cup profile with medium to heavy body.
Bio-Innovation
Through the Bioinnovation process, La Palma & El Tucán honors the main principles of organic farming. They first capture and reproduce microorganisms found in their farm’s beautiful forests, to create their own fermentation substrate. Then, they mix this substrate with perfectly ripen geisha cherries, in a clay pot for 100 hours. This combination allows them to create a sustainable closed cycle. After the fermentation, they remove the leftovers and reuse them as compost.
If you wish to request additional information about the processing of your microlot, such as fermentation time or type of drying, please let us know by filling this form.
We will get back to you soon with detailed information.
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