The only reason we have not bought any Colombian coffee for the past 2 years is that the coffee tends to fade very fast. We bought some bags 2-3 years ago that faded and tasted woody after only a month in storage in Oslo. We had to sell the coffee for under cost price to a big client that agreed to buy all the coffee. Because of this we lost a lot of money and I have not been willing to take that risk one more time.

I started researching why some coffees fades faster than others. We vacuum packed green coffee, froze green coffee and tested a whole bunch of solutions in order to try to keep the coffee fresh. Obviously the best solution is to use the coffee fast, hence buy smaller quantities more often.

Still this did not solve all the issues with coffees fading. I wanted to get to the bottom of why this happens faster with some coffees (very often with Honduran and Colombian coffees) and why some coffees like Kenya and Ethiopia kept much better over time.

I started looking at how coffee is processed, but could not see a big difference except soaking which is used a lot in Africa, but not in Colombia and Honduras. ( I do believe soaking helps a lot as it helps even out the moisture content of the beans before drying.) The biggest difference I found was with the drying techniques. In Colombia and Honduras a lot of farmers use solar dryers. They look like green houses of plastic where the coffee is dried in under plastic cover to protect it from rain. (pictures below)

When you walk in to one of these solar dryers, it is incredibly humid and hot. The parchment coffee is also very hot and most producers I have visited who have these dryers do not move the coffee very often. This means the coffee is over heated and also dried very unevenly. Although the moisture content in a sample might be 12% and correct, you are only measuring the average moisture of the sample, meaning some beans might be over dried to 9% moisture and others might have a moisture content of 15%. My theory therefore led to thinking that improper drying is the biggest cause for coffees fading fast. I got a good indication that this theory was solid when we got our Honduran coffees from Nacimiento 2 years ago. The Nacimiento coffee kept it’s freshness for almost 8 months while another Honduran coffee was faded upon arrival of the container even though it was vacuum packed. The 2 coffees had been stored in the same warehouse and been shipped with the same container. The Nacimiento was packed in Grain pro (which is considered slightly less superior in keeping coffee freshness than the vacuum pack, but much more sustainable.) The Vacuum packed coffee had been dried in a solar dryer for less than a week, the Nacimiento had been dried on a patio with continuous stirring for about 12 days.

The drying techniques in Africa, where coffees tends to keep fresh for longer, most coffees are dried slowly with continuous stirring on raised beds. The coffee is covered during the hottest part of the day (because of the workers lunch break) and is not over heated. So my theory was that fast drying with hot temperatures in humid conditions is not good for the coffee’s shelf life. The solar dryers are in fact doing more damage to the coffee than good.

This was again confirmed when I measured Elias’s coffee laying in the solar dryer, as all the samples were reading very differently from the same batch of coffee. The parchment in his dryer reached over 43°C and the air in the dryer was about 45°C – 50°C and humid. Not a good way to dry coffee for sure. The high parchment temperatures can in addition to over drying also  lead improper drying as the outer surface of the bean can crystallize. This makes it more difficult for the moisture to evaporate from the beans and the moisture in the center of the bean will start to migrate during storage leading to white edges on the green beans. (Left sample in picture below.) This has happened to one of our coffees in the past, which also tasted woody upon arrival, even though it was vacuum packed. Fortunately we got our money back for the damaged coffee.

Based on these experiences I was determined to help Elias to Improve his drying facilities. It doesn’t help to have the best coffees in the world if they taste woody when they arrive Norway. Elias had already started building some great drying beds in steel for the special lots. But they are expensive to build and unfortunately Elias does not have enough money to build enough beds to dry all his coffee on them. Hopefully in 1-2 years he will be able to dry most of his coffees this way.

I wanted Elias to be able to dry all his coffee in a good way, so we had a look at his solar dryer that he was already using. I decided to try to open up the side walls in order to get a better air circulation in the dryer while still protecting the coffee from rain by leaving the roof.

I also bough some black nylon net commonly used to give shade to nurseries, and we put it all over the ceiling in order to give shade for the parchment. I have had great experiences with implementing shade both for washed coffees and Naturals during drying on other farms in the past (Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza & the Caballero’s farms) , so I knew this would work better. (Also Luis Fernando Velez told me some years ago that in the old days coffee was never dried in the sun, but only by using air.)

We also cleaned the patio properly and I bought some more plastic so that Elias could fix the some leaks in the roof over the patio.

The results were great. During the hottest day of the week, the parchment had a maximum temperature of 28°C while the air temperature in the top of the dryer (30 cm from the ceiling) held a temperature of 33°C. The air inside was cool and not humid at all. The coffee was still drying efficiently and I made Edilson, the farm manager, stir the coffee about every hour. I am certain that this will improve the shelf life of the coffee with many months.

We also had a look at the wear housing for the coffee at the Co-operatives, and decided to store all the coffees in Garzon instead of in Pital as the wear house in Garzon had a much lower storage temperature.

I will be presenting a lot of interesting results on drying coffee in my Nordic Barista Cup Lecture in Copenhagen in August. If you are interested in learning more about this, look for the video of the lecture that will be online after the event.

After 4 days at Finca Tamana, I had to leave early morning on Friday to catch a plane from Neiva to Bogota. It turned out Avianca had cancelled my ticket, since I did not use my ticket from Bogota to Neiva. I got a bit upset to say the least and threw a bunch of brochures on the Avianca workers desk after some loud arguing. That lead to 2 hours of interrogation at the airport police office. They were about to take me to the DA’s office, but many thanks to the the local FNC (Colombian Coffee Growers Federation) who pulled some strings, I got out of the airport at 9.30am. Lesson learned!
I had to hire a driver to drive me to Bogota, and because of traffic I barely made my plane to Paris, where I am now writing this blog post.
But enough about my non-coffee adventures in Colombia.

During my stay at Finca Tamana, not only did we improve the cherry picking. We also started separating lots by sections on the farm and variety.

We also worked and improved the processing a lot. One of the things I had found after cupping Elias’ coffee many times is that he tended to have rough, not clean and slightly over fermented coffees from time to time. I was therefore insisting that we made a better and more standardized framework for him to work with.

We started with the basics. Cleaning. Elias cleans the wet mill every day and had invested in stainless steel plating for his cherry hopper in order to make it easier to clean. A great investment, but it doesn’t help when the de-pulper and fermentation tanks are filthy and absolutely disgusting. I put my fingers in the de pulper and scraped off a thick layer of a brown clay-like substance that smelled like manure. There was also a lot of stinker beans stuck in the fermentation tanks. When I showed Elias how dirty the equipment was, he was a bit embarrassed and promised to clean it properly every day from now on. I suggested to get a high pressure washer to clean all the tanks, equipment and the cherry hopper, but it will have to wait until next november as his finance capacity right now is low as he has made zero profit on his coffee for many years.

Early monday morning we decided to de-pulp and process all the coffee that was picked in the evening after the last delivery. Elias has normally de-pulped coffee 3 times a day and mixed all the parchment in one fermentation tank for fermenting until the next day in order to remove the mucilage. I believe this has been one of the reasons for some cups being over fermented, as the coffee that is de-pulped in the morning has 12 hours more fermentation time than the coffee de-pulped in the evening.

At the end of the day I also measured the temperature of the cherries that was delivered in the morning. The temperature was between 24 – 28 degrees on the 4 days I measured. (last day there was almost 33 degrees in the air mid day.) This means there is little risk of fermentation happening inside the cherry as long as the pickers leave the coffee in the shade during picking.

After de-pulping, I told them that it is important to make an even layer of coffee in the fermentation tank, so that you have a more even fermentation. It is also important that the tank is not too full as this will lead to uneven fermentation.

We de-pulped the coffee from 6-7pm and let the coffee dry-ferment until bedtime which is normally around 10pm. Before we went to bed we rinsed the coffee in the fermentation tank with clean water in order to make sure the fermentation is more even and does not happen too fast.

On Tuesday morning we checked the coffee and washed it at 9am, when it was ready. (Time will vary depending on temperature and the amount of coffee and mucilage.)

We washed the coffee, changing the water 4 times, until the coffee was clean. We also removed all the floaters and as much pulp as possible.

After washing we let the coffee soak in clean water for 24 hours, changing the soaking water 2-3 times.

On wednesday we took the coffee out to dry it in the sun. There was a huge difference in the appearance of the coffee already. The coffee processed the week before I came, looked dirty and uneven in colour.The coffee processed the new way looked super clean and had an even white colour. (See picture below: New process to the left, old technique to the right.) The new coffee smelled sweet and green like when you pick the coffee from the tree and taste the cherry. I am just dying to taste the results.

I will write more about drying in the next post.

Yesterday we had a meeting with the pickers at Finca Tamana to listen to their experience so far  after 3 days of using the new picking techniques. Although they had gotten a lot better and the cherry selection was great, there was still some pickers who were not careful with separating the over mature cherries. Elias had also noticed that a lot of the pickers did not clean the trees completely from ripe cherries as they were worried about loosing their volume. We had to tell them that if they are more careful with separation during picking, they will spend less time sorting cherries before delivery hence get more time to pick. The pickers seemed to agree and from what I had seen that afternoon, there were already a lot of pickers who had figured this out already as they had literally no defect cherries among the ripe ones.

Althoug most pickers were picking more or less the same amount as the average from the last 2 weeks, they addressed that they would be able to pick a lot more if they did not need to be so careful and separating cherries. They had calculated that on a good day they would make  more money with the new system  but on a day like yesterday they could have earned more with a lower price per arroba (12,5 kg of coffee cherry) and picking more randomly than with our higher price with the new picking standard.
After a long discussion they proposed that they got an additional 300 pesos per arroba meaning Elias will be paying them 3800 pesos per arroba instead of 2500 which is the standard in the area.

Elias agreed to the new payment, but also said that he will be even more strict with the quality as this is what he is paying for. Most of the pickers seemed ok with that.

I finished the meeting by showing the pickers the difference in parchment quality from the new system vs. the old. I also told them that we had achieved more in 4 days at Finca Tamana than I have done in 4 years on other farms around the world. I talked about the importance of them working as a team, and to illustrate, I gave them a new football (they play soccer every sunday) and also assigned Elias as the Manager, Edilson as the Coach and one of the oldest, most loyal and social pickers as the captain of the team. (Picture below)
We also talked about how important it is to communicate with each other and that if they had any issues they should talk to Elias directly, or talk to their new captain if they felt uncomfortable going to Elias.

Everyone seemed to be satisfied after the meeting, and they told me that when I come back in november, they will still be there waiting to play some soccer with me.

I will write more about processing and drying in the next posts. Yesterday was a long day of work but we accomplished a lot. We finished a couple of drying beds, made big improvements to the old  solar dryer, and washed the second batch of coffee. We even got two visitors, a technician and a lady, from Coocentral, the co-operative that buy and sell Elias’ coffee. They were blown away by the quality of the work and kept asking why we bother doing this. I think they will understand when they see the prices Elias will get for the coffee as well as the quality. I also managed to get them on film when they see the reception tank full of ripe cherries. A pretty fun experience. I don’t understand a lot of Spanish, but they kept saying the words “Excellente!” I guess that is a good sign.

I spent the whole Monday and Tuesday morning at Finca Tamana this week. The goal was to train the pickers to do a better job as well as documenting the extra spending and to see if the pickers actually made more money by doing a better job, otherwise I think I would get in trouble with the pickers.
I am very aware that Elias is in a financial squeeze. Still he seems to be committed to do all the measures necessary to improve quality, and that shows that he really believes in this project.

We are basically offering 1000 pesos more per arroba (12,5kg of cherry) for the pickers to sort out overripe, unripe and green cherries. This seems to work really well. The volumes are not down a lot and the pickers are already earning 5000 pesos more on average per day (USD 2,8. This is a 20% increase in salary per day.) The cherry delivery also looked a lot better than normal on Monday. Still there was room for improvement.

I decided to pick coffee for a couple of hours to see how difficult it was to separate semi ripe, unripe and over ripe from the ripe cherries, and it turned out it was more difficult than I thought. A lot of the cherries looks ripe from the top, but when you twist them they may still be unripe on the bottom. I managed to pick about 10 kg in 2 hours. (approximately 1,5 kg clean green quality coffee) A normal picker would do between 20 and 30 kg in the same time.

During the wrap up meeting with the pickers on Monday afternoon, I suggested to add an extra bag on the side of the cherry bucket where the red cherries are collected. Each picker would then be able to separate the bad cherry from the good in a more efficient way by putting it in the extra bag. They would then spend less time sorting out the bad cherry from the good on delivery of the cherry which means they will get more time in the field to pick coffee. They all seemed to be positive to this idea, and tuesday morning we already saw a big improvement both in efficiency as well as cherry uniformity and quality on the first delivery. (One of the pickers had made a creative solution by cutting a coke bottle in half and using it as an extra bucket. I decided to buy cokes for everyone so they all could do this.)

The pickers were much more confident and happy with this solution, as one of the hardest things to get them to do was proper sorting of cherries before the coffee was delivered to the receiving tank. The sorting involves sitting on the ground and picking out bad cherries from a pile of cherries. This seems to be quite inefficient and even though this is a part of the reason why we pay them more, it steals time both from their breakfast and lunch as well as they are loosing some time where they could be picking more coffee. As pickers are payed by the volume they pick, it is important to make them both efficient and quality focused.

Another problem we found a solution to was that we were a bit worried the pickers would throw the bad cherries on the ground in the field. This can increase broca population at the farm (a beetle that eats coffee beans) as they lay their eggs in the cherries that fall to the ground. We therefore decided to weigh the bad cherries together with the good cherries and pay the same price for both. This way the pickers don’t loose money and they seemed to be better at picking up cherries from the ground as well.

In the evening we started implementing a better washing technique that involves a mid rinse and soaking. I will write about this in the next post.

I am writing from my hotel room in Garzon after a long day at Finca Tamana in Pital, Huila, Colombia. I am going to spend a week here to work at the farm.

Finca Tamana is a 60 Hectar farm, that my friend Elias Roa retrieved 2 years ago almost by coincidence. It is situated in the mountains near Pital and is the neighboring farm of Finca La Lomita, a farm we bought great coffee from some years ago, before the farmer abandoned the farm and his family in order to pursue his new love. (Sounds like a story written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.)

I have known Elias for about 5 years after we first met on his farm in Acevedo, Huila on my first trip to Colombia. Although Elias has been growing coffee for many years,  I have never bought any of his coffee due to it’s inconsistent quality. So, when I visited him in Pital in June 2011 and had a tour of his new big farm I got a great idea. I wanted to rent some land on his farm to grow my own coffee. Elias liked the idea and we sat down in November to discuss how we could manage this project. After a long discussion we agreed that I would not rent the land after all, but rather commit to helping Elias improve his farming techniques and the quality of his coffee.  As a payback, Elias will give me priority on his coffees so that I can buy as much as I like of it before it is offered to someone else. I will of course pay a premium for the coffee in order to cover the extra costs of experiments and the new techniques implemented and also to make sure Elias gets a good and secure income. (He is currently only breaking even on his production.)

We decided that we would start working together during the main harvest which normally is in June / July. Therefore I was supposed to come here for 3 weeks in June / July to work at Tamana in order to improve the quality of the coffee and learn Spanish. Everything was going according to plan until Elias called me 3 weeks ago to tell me that the harvest was early this year and I had to come immediately.

As I was already on an around the world trip to Korea, Australia and Guatemala, I managed to change my ticket to go to Colombia too. So, here I am, exhausted after a long day at the farm.

Since it is Sunday today, the workers were not working, so Elias picked me up to go and see the farm and meet the workers in order to plan everything we are going to do this week. I was surprised to see that Elias was already building new drying beds for the coffee as well as making other improvements to the farm that I will write about in a  later post.

The most important task for the day was to have a meeting with the pickers and workers at the farm in order to tell them what we had planned. I was a little bit intimidated and nervous to talk to them as I know that they can be very skeptical to change.

To sum up the meeting, here is basically what I told them:   “From today on we will start a new era of Finca Tamana and your lives. We shall only work with high quality and by doing so, be less dependent on the coffee market price and be in control of the quality and income of the farm. That means everyone working at the farm needs to work together and focus on all details every day in order to make the quality better. If one person cuts corners, everyone will  loose. Therefore we have to work as a team towards the same goal. That goal is to produce the best coffee in Huila.

The first thing we will be focusing on is the cherry picking. We will only accept fully ripe cherries to be picked. The green and semi ripe cherries is not to be picked as they need to be left on the trees to ripen. If you pick the green and semi ripe cherries, the quality of the coffee and therefore the value of the coffee will be lower, Elias will loose money, and therefore not be able to pay you better.”

After a 30 minute meeting I was surprised to see that all of the pickers seemed very positive (although they were very shy and hard to read) especially the oldest worker. They agreed to commit to do a better job and were happy to hear that for the extra work they will receive a higher payment (+34%) per 12,5 kg of cherry. Although they need to hand sort cherries after delivery before the coffees are being processed, and the selective picking will be slightly slower, we estimated that in worst case scenario they will have a salary increase of 7-10%.

The rest of the day was spent planning how to process and dry the coffee as well as talking about the importance of accounting and budgeting so that Elias can plan his finance a bit better. We will also be separating all the coffees by variety, lot (full sun and shade grown coffee) and try out some different fermentation and drying techniques.

We start tomorrow at 6am and I will be working until late at night in order to make sure the process runs according to plan. I can’t wait to get started.

To be continued….

We have used a coffee lot from Suaza, Colombia in our espresso for a while. From Tuesday february 2nd,  we will start to sell it as a single origin coffee (light roast) too. To read more about the coffee, go here.