This lot from the Incorporate co-op is one of the fruitiest, yet cleanest naturals we’ve had all year. Usually with a natural you can expect deep fruity notes, and maybe chocolatey ferment notes, signs of a deep layered drying bed. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it's more surprising, and more fitting summer, when we find one that's bright, fruity, with no ferment funk at all, a flavour profile we’d describe as being very clean.
The Incorporate co-op is an alliance of farmers and processing companies that helps partner specialty coffee with modern innovative processing techniques, elevating these lots from how they’d be processed independently.
The co-ops founder, César Diaz, says “We form these alliances because resources or knowledge are often lacking to elevate coffee to the next level. This is where Incorporate steps in, processing specialty coffee with care and dedication.”
This coffee is grown in four farms in the Tolima region, before being selected for processing in the city of Armenia, Colombia (remove if unnecessary, Avoid confusion with the country of Armenia). At the processing stage, the coffee cherries are fermented in bags for 72 hours, regularly being turned over to allow the fermentation juices to evenly cover the beans. This process is not unique, but it’s far from standard procedure for a natural lot, and helps develop a lot of this coffee's unique flavours. The usual natural processing stage takes place next, where coffee cherries are slowly dried with natural airflow. If this stage is done quickly, or if the cherries are dried in deep layers, the coffee would ferment and develop funky fruity flavours. For this lot, it is done slow and in thin layers, as the aim is to keep the coffee very clean, since fruity flavours have already been developed in the bag fermentation stage.
The results of this interesting natural process is a coffee bursting with a bright watermelon juiciness, a nice balanced kiwi, goldenberry acidity, and a very clean cup. That clean finish makes it a natural coffee that even a washed coffee aficionado could love, and who doesn’t like that?
