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Costa Rica Cordillera del Fuego Anaerobic

Cupping notes

Nectarine, red berries, lavender, fudge, cinnamon, honey, spicy.

Description

Cordillera Del Fuego SA was founded in 2015 when two coffee producing families with more than 40 years industry experience between them came together to create something new. Focussing on both thermal shock and anaerobic fermentations, cherries are grown on the Finca Berlin de San Ramón de Alajuela, in the West Valley of Costa Rica and owned by Mr. Evelio Fernández, one of Cordillera Del Fuego’s associates.

For making the anaerobic fermentation, there are a number of principles considered. The coffee bean is a fruit, and the mucilage is the juice and the flavour of the fruits is concentrated in the juice and not the seeds. The mucilage will have differing levels of sugars according to the ripeness of the grain, variety, time of year and type of soil, and therefore the mucilage across a ‘lot’ of coffee will have several flavours.

Cherries are harvested at 26 Brix, is pulped and placed inside the fermentation tank. After selection, the coffees that will be the donors of the mucilage for the anaerobic coffee will also be pulped. These coffees also have to be very ripe with a Brix reading close to 26. This coffee donor is pulped and the parchment is passed through the demucilaging machine, tightly packed to create a mucilage ‘gel’.

This gel is added inside the fermentation tanks where we had placed the coffee beans to be anaerobic. The amount of gel should be enough to cover the entire parchment, and the beans are mixed well to ensure homogeneity. The whole process is done in stainless steel containers, totally closed. This produces a lot of pressure as the fermentation process creates CO2, and without an airlock system the pressure builds. Fermentation can be controlled by the temperature (different yeasts have their own favoured temperature range for being active) and is since the process is required to last approximately between 18 and 23 hours. After 15 hours the PH is constantly measured to know how the fermentation is going.

The fermentation must stop when the sugar of the mucilage has been consumed, but before alcohol is produced. During the fermentation the release of CO2 produced not being able to leave exerts a high pressure on the grains and allows the flavours of the coffee juices to be introduced inside the parchment.

Once the measurement and the fermentation has concluded, the tanks are opened very carefully, because they have a high pressure; later the coffee is drained, (the gel put in the tank at this moment is very liquid) and dried in the sun. It must be carefully coordinated so that the coffee receives at least 4 hours of sun the first day, because if not, it can happen that the fermentation continues and it is not possible to catch the desired flavours.

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Origin
Process
Anaerobic Fermentation
Altitude
1275 - 1350m
Harvest
January - March
Species
SCA score
87.5
Varietal

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