El Encanto
The Coffee
El Encanto is a farm with altitudes from 1380 - 1600 masl in Bolivar in Antioquia. It’s about 18 hectares planted with coffee of different varieties. We are basically cupping every small lot of specialty that comes out of the farm and are able to select and curate the lots, based on process and cultivars.
This lot is a mix of Castillo and Variedad Colombia from the higher altitudes. It’s a fully washed coffee. The coffees are picked and sorted before they are pulped and dry fermented for 24 hours with intermediate rinse in clean water. It’s dried on raised beds under shade for 25 days.
Juan Saldarriaga is a young producer that took over the families farms in 2012 and started to plant several different and new cultivars . Everything from unusual Castillos, Caturras and Tabi’s to Bourbon, Geisha and SL28’s among others. So far it’s about figuring out how they all perform in the environment, and then increase production over time. Since we started to cooperate he have built different concepts of drying facilities, changed the processing and started to manage a few other farms in the area too. We are specially surprised by the effect the improved drying has on he’s coffees. He is drying a lot of our washed coffees under shade, and the naturals in a specially designed mechanical «cold dryer».
A couple of years ago Juan started a small project with other young growers in the region. The two farms he now owns are about 60 hectares each, in altitudes from 1400 to 1800 masl. He is experimenting with different cultivars in different altitudes, and many of them are recently planted. We met a few years ago, and what really encouraged us to work with him was the will to change, adapt and improve to meet the future demand on qualities. Antioquia is known for solid, but maybe slightly boring coffees, but there is a lot going on right now, and we think these coffees are proof of that.
The biggest challenge is the drying due to humidity and temperature. After we met Juan and started to talk about drying under shade, he immediately constructed drying facilities with raised bed under cover. He has also installed a machine that can dry with cold air and with a software where you can adjust temperature, airflow etc, and make profiles on different coffees.
He's also working with friends and surrounding producers with Caturras and other cultivars up to 2000 masl. Many of them are young small farmers that are eager to proof that antioquia have more than chocolaty and heavy bodied coffees.
The Farmer
Region: Bolivar, Antioquia
Altitude: 1380-1600
Variety: Colombia & Castillo
Processing: Washed
Farm size: 18 hectares
Processing
Harvesting periods
El Encanto will have two harvesting periods, September – January and March – June. The weird thing here is that it’s also related to cultivars. The Tabi for instance is mainly producing for the September-January harvest, but the main harvest for Caturra and Castillo is March – June. But all of the trees generally have a fly crop too.
Picking:
They have one person on the farm managing the pickers and the quality. They always pick the coffee by block and keep everything separate. That way it will also be processed by cultivar. The pickers get a good premium for every bag of high quality. They separate the bags of the higher qualities to go in to quality production and special prep. The cherries for naturals are always going through an extra and very thorough hand sorting and selection before they go to the drying.
Pulping and fermentation:
After cherry selection the cherries are soaked in water and the floaters removed before they go in to production. The coffees are then pulped in a traditional disc pulper with a separator for greens etc. The quantity and availability of the tanks will sometimes determine what kind of fermentation they are doing. When they have big amounts like 5000 kg of cherries in a day they dry ferment everything in tanks. They add fresh cold water and rinse every 6-8 hours. Normal fermentation time will be about 24 hours. As the altitudes are not to high at the wet mill they want to keep the temperature down and control the fermentation. When the amounts are smaller and for experiments they ferment one batch as described above, but they add a new batch of coffee after 24 hours. The total fermentation time can be 48 hours, but still with a rinse of cold water every 6 hours.
Drying:
They have 4 different drying options. Traditional silo (mechanical dryer) cold dryer (mechanical), African beds in a parabolic dryer (greenhouse) and African beds in the shade drying area. The traditional silo is only for the conventional and “commercial” qualities. They move micro lots from all three farms to La Claudina for drying experiments. For the shade and parabolic they mainly do washed coffees, and washed and naturals in the cold dryer. It takes from 20 up to 30 days and the space and quantity they can do there is limited. They are also experimenting with honey in shade. In the parabolic dryer it takes about 10 – 20 days. So far they have focused on Tabi in the parabolic as well as some honey. The cold dryer have been used both for washed and naturals. But naturals have priority as they really seems to benefit from the controlled environment. They experiment with drying from 25 degrees to 40 degrees. Most naturals are dried between 25 and 30 degrees.
