Neighbors & crops
ELSA CORTES
SAN JUAN
Village: Anatoli, Cundinamarca
Altitude: 1400 M.A.S.L
Variety: Castillo
The Profile
Elsa is 50 years old and has been producing Coffee for the last 20 years. By the same time she bought her farm the San Juan, a half-hectare estate where she has around 3.000 coffee plants, mainly of Castillo variety. She also diversifies her income by producing plantain and some citrus fruits.
Elsa has five children, one 20-year-old man, and four girls (32-26-25-22). All of them leaving and working in the urban area. She lives at the farm with her husband and three workers. Among the five of them, they manage all of the farm labors.
Before joining the Neighbors & Crops program Elsa used to sell her coffee to local buyers from Cachipay. She told us that she found it very hard to achieve the wet and drying process as it took a lot of her time and she didn’t have the infrastructure.
With the Neighbors & Crops program, we offer her our trained team of pickers during harvest, we transport the coffee cherries to our wet mill and process it into the unique coffee profiles you now own. We consider this chain of specialization a helpful method that alleviates major stresses on everyone involved. We hope to continue helping our neighbors, in the same way, that they help us!
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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