Colombia Quindio Cherry Madness Co-Fermented

Edwin Noreña is one of Colombia’s true processing obsessives. Known among friends as “El Alquimista” (the alchemist), Edwin has dialed in a wide repertoire of fermentation profiles, often using multiple fermentations in sequence to achieve a desired expression. This natural process microlot was made possible using two careful and distinct full cherry fermentations, the second of which was heavily fortified and infused. The result is a heavy, syrupy cup with flavors of fruit punch, black cherry, and rose jelly. It is intense but still crisp, with candy-like sweetness and the energizing top notes of licorice or sarsaparilla root. 

Quindío Department and Finca Campo Hermoso 

For such a naturally gifted department as Quindío, it tends to receive less recognition than others for its coffee. Quindío is Colombia’s second-smallest department by size, making up only about 0.2% of the national territory. It’s location, however, right on the central cordillera of Colombia’s vast Andes divide, and centrally between the country’s largest and most influential cities (Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali), give it a high volume of tourist traffic, coffee industry, airline commuters, and idyllic getaways in the form of brightly painted mountain towns, natural reserves, and high elevation tropical landscapes throughout. Almost the entire department is mountainous, its lowest elevations still over 1000 meters, and many parts are dense with coffee plantations, from the small to the large and ambitious. 

Finca Campo Hermoso is a 15-hectare farm outside of Circasia, only a few kilometers north of Quindío’s capital city, Armenia. Its owner, Edwin Noreña, is an agroindustrial engineer by trade with graduate-level studies in biotechnology. Edwin is a well-connected and highly aspirational coffee producer who focuses on pairing very specific cultivars with very specific processing methods designed to express the most surprising, memorable, and delicious coffees possible within his resources. Finca Campo Hermoso concentrates on growing a wide variety of coffee genetics, including pink bourbon, yellow bourbon, yellow caturra, bourbon sidra, gesha, and Cenicafé 1, a resistant hybrid developed by Cenicafé, Colombia’s national coffee research institute. The resulting coffees are often marketed under “El Alquimista”, Edwin’s personal brand for his microlots, which have featured in barista competitions and choosy roasters around the world (and Royal Coffee’s own inventory on an annual basis). 

Processing, particularly the fermentation step, always interested Edwin because of its potential to transform raw coffee seeds into a remarkably unique sensory experience for coffee drinkers. A breakthrough moment for him was realizing that the sugary, residual liquid produced during the fruit fermentation (known as the must in winemaking) could be used again in subsequent fermentations to add natural sugars, and also serve as a solvent for flavoring agents. Over the years Edwin has co-fermented with chilis, ginger, brewers hops, and, in this case dehydrated fruit, to develop unique flavors in his microlots. 

Cherry Madness Co-Fermented Process 

You know you’re writing about a complicated process when you need to start with an abstract. Here goes. Edwin’s processing for this particular lot involved two distinct whole cherry fermentations, both of which were oxygen-deprived to different degrees. The second fermentation was very long and included the use of a complex formulation of coffee cherry must (a biproduct of the first fermentation) pure glucose, dehydrated fruit and fresh raspberry pulp, all of which was blended into a solution and circulated through the coffee cherry as it sat. Finally, the cherry was moved directly to raised screen beds to dry as a full natural. Each stage adds a particular bit of uniqueness to the final coffee, so that by the end the coffee is truly one of a kind in the world. 

The first fermentation was a simple anerobic fermentation of fresh coffee cherry only, carefully hand-sorted for ripeness and consistency, and washed clean. This stage lasted 24 hours. During fermentations like these, even when short, the coffee fruit becomes softer, sweeter, and more acetic, while also leaching out a concentrated sticky, sugary runoff—the mossto or “must”, not unlike the must from freshly smashed grapes and skins in winemaking.  

After the first cherry fermentation was complete, the fermented cherry was separated from its must and packed into the fermentation tanks again. The must was then fermented on its own, along with brewer’s yeast to inoculate the process and ample quantities of both pure glucose (sugar solution) and dehydrated fruits, and fresh raspberry. The cherry spent 120 hours in oxygen-deprived fermentation, during which this fermented and flavored must was circulated through the coffee cherry every 24 hours, for 5 total circulations.   

In the final step the co-fermented cherry was moved, unwashed, directly to Edwin’s greenhouse to dry on raised screen beds, where it dried for 10 days as a traditional honey process coffee—with the mucilage still clinging to the parchment. 

The fully dried coffee was then conditioned for 8 days in a warehouse, allowing for humidity to stabilize inside the seeds, and then moved into GrainPro bags for long-term storage, where it was cupped numerous times over the next few weeks for quality analysis. 

Edwin used a high-quality cultivar here but still a very common one: caturra is considered a “classic” Colombia genetic, having dominated much of the landscape prior to the coffee rust outbreaks of the 2010s. In other words, the arabica genetics themselves are not exotic to Colombia. Rather, the achievement is in the husbandry of the trees, the harvesting, precise blend of the different cherries, and of course the very exacting processing approach created entirely by Edwin. Some “experimental” coffees scream their processes crudely in the cup; the best ones are so symphonic as to seem effortless, the way a well-made bonsai tree can be both a specimen of nature and a monument to an extraordinary amount of work, study, and concentration.