Neighbors & crops
ROSALBA CASTRO
COLEGIO
Village: Anatoli, Cundinamarca
Altitude: 1600 M.A.S.L
Variety: Castillo
The Profile
The farm Granja Colegio Anatoly belongs to the Anatolí School, where Doña Rosalba is the Dean and she, along with staff member and teacher, Carolina are in charge of managing and taking care of the farm.
The farm was donated to the school by the municipality of La Mesa, in the Anatoly village. The village counts on the support of the Comité de Cafeteros of Cundinamarca, or the Department of Cundinamarca Coffee Farmers.
Local workers from the village are hired as farm laborers or, in some occasions, the teachers, parents and high school students volunteer for work.
The coffee plantation is divided into parcels. Each high school class is in charge of taking care of one parcel where, along with the coffee crops, they undertake different agricultural projects such as composting, and fish and chicken farming.
At LA PALMA & EL TUCÁN, we want to continue supporting this farm by offering technical assistance that can help them grow better coffees year by year. It’s not easy to hire labor in the region, so we need to incentivize the parents, teachers, and students to continue volunteering and become more committed to the farm and agricultural work. We visualize it as an incubator for future farmers that can help us revitalize the coffee culture in our region, and work the are with better more ecologically friendly practices.
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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