Blood Orange - Washed Aerobic Process - Peru

ALTITUDE: 1900 masl 
VARIETIES: catuai, pache, caturra 
ACIDITY: bright citric and tartaric acidity 
ROAST LEVEL: light 
TEXTURE: juicy as filter, syrupy as espresso 
AFTERTASTE: tart but not dry

This coffee was grown in Cajamarca by the Flores family. The Cajamarca region yields some amazing quality coffees with its ideal growing conditions and breadth of varieties; quality is sometimes lost in picking, processing and drying, with producers lacking infrastructure and knowledge. This coffee is purchased with Falcon Coffees, who tackle this sort of problem head on with their team in Peru, and they buy parchment directly from the Flores family in this case.

In this coffee, we see an aerobic washed process with an extended fermentation. Coffee cherries are actually pre-fermented overnight in bags to macerate a little, before being depulped and fermented for 24 to 36 hours. The initial overnight fermentation gives the coffee a boost to its citric flavour. All of this micro-lot is dried inside a greenhouse with natural wind ventilation, drying until its moisture content is a touch below 11%. At that point, it’s ready for hulling. Dry parchment is removed in the mill, and coffee is then stored in GrainPro humectant sealed bags to be preserved on the voyage from Peru to Alicante for us to roast. Beautiful.