Colombia Las Flores

This coffee tastes like good news. When you get them, you’re like a child in a candy store. And the feeling is even sweeter if you worked intense for this achievement, like picking big amounts of raspberries and grapes in full season. The hardest time is gone, enjoy the harvest time!

Farm Las Flores began in 1990, it was founded by Edilberto Vergara and Nubia Ayure. Originally from the department of Cundinamarca, they are children of coffee growers who inherited their passion for the countryside and especially for coffee.
 
By 1998, a family is already formed in a nucleus of 5 children, from eldest to youngest: Xiomara, Leonardo, Carlos, Jhoan and Diego. At this time, the tradition was to cultivate, harvest, wash, dry and sell, this was the productive cycle that was used. In 2006, their mother took the initiative to compete in the cup of excellence and was ranked 16th and it was at that moment that she took the first steps to explore the great world of specialty coffees. Years later, their mother passed away and left them a very important legacy, a task that they must carry out- in life she was a person who faithfully believed that the field had a future as long as they studied in depth everything related to coffee.
 
Already immersed in the subject of quality, Carlos, Jhoan and Diego decided to take the next step. It consisted in starting to develop replicable profiles and thus be able to highlight the potential of each variety, each one having its fundamental work on the farm. Carlos and Diego are in charge of processing and giving proper management to fermentation times, types of processes and care in drying, while Jhoan is in charge of analyzing the experiments, defining which process is according to the variety and judging the quality. He is also in charge of the commercial part, to publicize the work that is done together. According to the time that we have carried out this project, we have been able to design different processes such as natural, honey, and washed, highlighting each characteristic of each variety.
 
Process details:
● Step 1. Hand picking of the ripest cherries (22 Brix degrees and above)
● Step 2. The Cherries are left to oxidate in cherry for about 36 hours in open bags.
● Step 3. The cherries are selected by density by putting them in water and removing the ones that float. This also help cool the inside temperature of the cherries before the next step.
● Step 4. The coffee is pulped and packed in sealed plastic bags calibrated at 50kg each to undergo an anaerobic process for 60 hours.
● Step 5. The beans are washed with water at 40 degrees and then cooled with cold water to stop the fermentation (termal shock).
● Step 6. The beans are put to dry in a casa elba for 12-15 days depending on the weather and they are moved 3-4times a day to make sure that all beans dry evenly.