Why We Love This Roast

Where do we even begin? We have been absolutely blown away by every coffee we have ever tasted from Edwin Noreña. It started two years ago with his Gold Washed Anaerobic Pink Bourbon and continued last year with his Gold Washed Anaerobic Gesha & his Black Honey Red Bourbon with Hops. Most recently, we featured his Red Fruits Candy Crush. We couldn’t be more proud and honored to bring you this one, the IPA Process Pink Bourbon, which is an anaerobic co-fermentation with hops.

Edwin is a 3rd generation coffee producer, a trained agronomist, a certified Q-grader, and a sought-after Cup of Excellence judge who works on consulting projects across Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. As far as resumés are concerned in coffee, he’s the total package for innovation and intention. He is working with co-fermentations, mostos, yeasts, “anaerobics” and a wide range of varieties, some of which he cultivates himself, and some of which he purchases in cherry from allied farms in other regions in Colombia to be processed at his state of the art facility in Quindío.

This lot was grown and processed in the facilities of Finca Campo Hermoso. It gets its name from the hops inoculated fermentation stage. The cherries are selected at maximum ripeness by hand, then floated for density. Remaining cherries are then placed in sealed drums for a 120 hour anaerobic fermentation phase. After this phase, the coffee is dry pulped (removing outer skin, allowing mucilage to remain) and inoculated with hops (Citra and Magnum hops) and malt mix along with the coffee cherry mosto, then placed again in the drums for another 96 hours of anaerobic fermentation. The final stage is a slow dry on raised beds in shade, where the coffee takes about 20-25 days to dry to the desired moisture level.

As you might expect from the name and the fact that hops and a malt mix were used during the fermentation, this coffee screams hazy IPA. Tons of citrus and hop notes, but that’s not all, there’s plenty of guava and tropical fruit action as well. Cheers!

You may notice that the beans look quite dark. This color is absolutely normal for a coffee that is processed this heavily as it breaks down the cell structure significantly more than washed or natural processing does. If you’ve ever had light roast decaf coffee, you’ll have seen this before. Those beans also look like a dark roast. So for these kinds of coffees, the color is not a good indicator of roast level. Flavor-wise it does not taste dark at all - it is a normal light roast in terms of development and drop temperature, etc.

Because of the more significant breakdown of the cell structure during the processing, you also don't need to rest it for very long at all (again, same as decaf), so we recommend getting started brewing right away!

Water Recommendation:

For those of you who want to get every last drop of excellence out of this coffee, our preferred brewing water (at least for cupping) is full-strength Third Wave Water (130ppm GH, 40ppm KH).

Full-strength Third Wave Water gives a very sweet cup with excellent acidity and origin character. The hop-like character is the most prominent with this water, and the tropical fruit notes are intense.

Half-strength Third Wave Water (65ppm GH, 20ppm KH), which is nearly identical to Lance Hedrick’s Light & Bright water (60ppm GH, 25ppm KH), gives a much more acid-driven cup profile that somewhat lacks complexity, at least in comparison to full-strength TWW. Because this coffee is just so sweet and fruity, there is still plenty of sweetness though. This water produces the most lemon-forward brew.

Rao/Perger water (90ppm GH, 42ppm KH), as is often the case for our Black Label series coffees, might give the most complex cup, as there is the widest array of tropical fruit notes. It just isn’t as sweet as full-strength TWW.

Philadelphia water (Baxter water supply) filtered with a three-stage carbon system with a little softening (somewhat similar to what a Brita pitcher would do) also gives a very good cup profile, quite similar to Rao/Perger water, but there is an additional slightly savory note with this water.

If this is all very confusing—check out our blog post on water for coffee!