Neighbors & crops
NICOLAS CORTES VIVAS
EL CHARQUITO
Village: Cachipay, Cundinamarca
Altitude: 1550 M.A.S.L
Variety: Castillo
The Profile
Nicolas is 56 years old and has grown coffee for over 20 years. He comes from a family of traditional farmers of coffee, fruits, and vegetables. After some years of working with his parents, he eventually took out a loan and bought the farm from them to continue growing coffee in the region. His brother Jorge (the one on the pictures) helps him with the crops.
As a father of three, Nicolas receives help from only one of his children on the farm; however, the other two have found work in the city. Unfortunately, due to the lack of infrastructure and space, the Cortes family has been forced to work in businesses outside agriculture to sustain the family.
Since joining the Neighbors & Crops program, Don Nicolas has noticed a significant difference in his entire coffee process. He finds the additional labor from our trained cherry-picking team immensely helpful, and the transportation of his coffee cherries to our wet mill practical. Now, Don Nicolas can enjoy more free time to work on other projects and can spend more time visiting his children and grandchildren. We hope to continue supporting Don Nicolas and his family for more harvests to come!
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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