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Farm Name : El Bosque
Location : Alto Pirias, Chirinos, Cajamarca
Altitude : 1800masl
Variety : Caturra
Farming Practises : Organic and chemical fertiliser use, manual weeding
Drying : Parabolic dryer
Processing Style: Natural
Fermentation Time : 48 hours
Farmer Story:
Eli Espinoza is a second generation coffee farmer, originally from the highland area of Cajamarca where his family grow potatoes, raise sheep and plant beans and peas. Eli followed his father to Chirinos in the early 2000s, when his father was just starting to plant coffee, however since the family had no income whilst the coffee was not yet fruiting, Eli had to go out and work in farms in the area in order to help provide for his family. Eli saved up enough money over the following years to buy a small plot of land where he planted his first caturra trees. Slowly over the years he accumulated more land, built his house and installed the drying and processing infrastructure necessary for coffee. Now Eli and his wife own around four hectares of land planted with coffee, they grow caturra, bourbon, java, geisha and heirloom varieties.
Processing:
Eli mostly produces natural coffees, which he prefers as he believes they give better results in the cup. In 2019 Eli started investigating into different processing techniques, as he had started picking selectively and taking great care of his coffees, but the cup score didn’t always reflect that. First of all he started fermenting washed coffees for longer periods of time, with good results, then moved on to honey and naturals.
Ultimately, the fermentation and drying method he implemented that year improved the quality of his coffee and so he has maintained that process since then. Eli picks all of his varieties deep, ruby red ripe, before taking them back to his house and processing area where he washes and floats the cherry. After removing all the floaters the coffee is covered with a tarpaulin sheet and fermented in tiled tanks for 48 hours. After this fermentation step is complete the coffee is then place on a lined patio where it pre-dries, this essentially gets off any excess moisture from the cherry prior to it entering the parabolic dryer.
Dying:
After fermentation the coffee is pre-dried in the sun for a couple of hours to remove excess moisture before being placed on raised bedsinside a parabolic dryer where it dries for 30 days.