Edwin Noreño 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 microlot was processed using three distinct fermentations and the addition of a custom fermentation solution packed with fresh and dried fruit to infuse the parchment coffee. The resulting fruit flavors in the cup are intense and literal, very candy-like, and unlike any other coffee in the world.
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 cultivating very specific varieties paired 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 cultivars, 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 from time to time).
Edwin is a third-generation coffee grower and agricultural engineer. Processing, particularly the fermentation step, always interested him 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 whole cherry fermentation 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 fresh and dehydrated fruit, to develop unique flavors in his microlots.
Mossto Nitro Watermelon Honey 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 three distinct fermentations: one of purely fresh whole coffee cherries; a second “classic washed” fermentation of depulped parchment; and a final fermentation of the parchment submerged in a carefully formulated solution of coffee cherry must (a biproduct of the first fermentation) and a cocktail of fresh and dehydrated fruit. Each stage adds a particular twist to the sweetness and acid character. The final fermentation really seems to have turned the fruit up to 11.
The first fermentation was with fresh coffee cherry only, carefully hand-sorted for ripeness and consistency, washed clean, and immediately moved into sealed tanks to ferment for 96 hours. During this first fermentation the fruit becomes dramatically softer, sweeter, and more acetic, while also leaching out a concentrated sticky, sugary runoff, or “must”, not unlike the must from freshly smashed grapes and skins in winemaking.
After the first 96 hours were complete, the fermented cherry was depulped and moved back into the tanks for 48 hours. A classic anaerobic “fully washed” fermentation. During this time, the must runoff from the cherry fermentation was also fermented, on its own, and infused with fresh and dehydrated fruits, creating an intense flavoring solution for the final fermentation stage.
The final fermentation was of the parchment coffee, submerged 30% in the lacto-fermented coffee-fruit must, for 48 hours. Once this was complete the parchment was moved directly to raised beds in Edwin’s solar dryer, where it dried for 10 days.
The fully dried coffee is 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 is cupped numerous times over the next few weeks for quality analysis.
Edwin used high quality cultivars here but still very common ones—Castillo is a government-created resistant hybrid with a checkered reputation for quality, red bourbon is a well-known standard and pink bourbon is starting to have a unique following but is still widely grown with mixed results. The arabica genetics themselves are not exotic to Colombia. Rather, the exaggerated character here 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. The result is no mistake; it’s a celebration of the wacky and gorgeous spectrum of sweetness in Colombia’s natural landscape. It’s not for everybody, but for some it’s a step beyond what we imagined possible—and delicious—in coffee processing.
