Neighbors & crops
GUSTAVO PARRADO
EL RECUERDO
Village: Anatoli, Cundinamarca
Altitude: 1650 M.A.S.L
Variety: Castillo
The Profile
Gustavo Parrado is a 70 years-old traditional coffee farmer. As his parents were coffee growers, don Gustavo was related to the crops ever since he can remember. He first started with coffee as a picker and fell in love with these beautiful trees. But there was a time when the price of coffee dropped and decided to move to the city searching for new opportunities. He worked as a driver at the Bogotá City Hall, and as his wife Miriam he got his pension from the National District Secretary.
After his retirement, don Gustavo decided to return to his roots, and dedicate the rest of his days to the lands which gave him everything. But as the coffee price is quite low and there was no help from the national coffee federation, don Gustavo decided to plant avocado and cane. It wasn’t after the appearance of La Palma & El Tucán that he could return to his true passion, coffee. For don Gustavo his plants are the most important thing, he loves to take care of them and watch them grow beautiful and disease-free.
Don Gustavo has 7 grown-up children, but only two of them, Deivi and John help him with the crops. They both help him planting the trees, and Deivi also keeps the accounts of the farm. The other five work in the city and are not very interested in agriculture.
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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