Colombia El Diviso Sidra (RESERVE)

A Truly Exceptional & Rare Coffee

This coffee is from the same producer and is the same varietal & processing method that was used for the lot that Anthony Douglas from Axil Coffee Roasters used to win the 2022 World Barista Championships in Melbourne. Read more at:

• SA Coffee Magazine
• Roast Magazine

We are the only roastery (that we know of) to feature this lot in South Africa. We have 56 kg of this coffee for this season – after what we pour in the cafe, there will only be a small number of bags sold. If you are within driving distance, come in and taste it prepared any way you like – ask our baristas for advice – or grab a bag of beans for home.

This exceptional coffee comes from 24-year-old producer Nestor Lasso and his El Diviso farm. 80,000 coffee trees grow there at a range of 1700-1850 metres. Producer Nestor says:

“We are the third generation that has been growing coffee. Our grandfather, José Uribe, was the founder of the farm El Diviso. With the work of all the family and constant savings we were able to build the infrastructure to process differentiated coffees: searching for better quality. both in coffee and our lives. After a long trial and error period we managed to standardise different processes, getting a better income in order to plant new varieties that allowed us to have better quality. One of our dreams is to produce specialty coffee that reaches all the world.”

SA’s 2023 barista champion Stevo Kuhn used a different lot from the same producer at the recent WBC in Greece.

Processing

For this naturally processed, rare Bourbon Sidra varietal lot, they start by picking cherries that are at their optimal ripeness, between 24° and 26° Brix. The coffee is collected by trained pickers, who evaluate the cherries to decide if they can be used for this process. Cherries of lower quality are separated. The coffee is then put into in plastic jars for 48 hours, or until the pH reaches 4.5. The coffee is floated in order to get rid of any lower density and impure cherries. This first water contact is done with cold/ambient temperature water.

The cherries then go through a 50° Celsius thermal shock before being stored in jars, where an anaerobic fermentation phase begins. Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast (T58 – a type of yeast commonly used in beer breweries) is added during this fermentation, which occurs at 35° Celsius for 80 hours. A 1:5000 ratio is used (1g of yeast to 5kg of cherry).

The coffee is then moved to a mechanical drying system in order to dehydrate the cherries as much as possible, very quickly. The coffee is then placed on African drying beds for approximately 15 days or until the target humidity is reached.