El Balso – Kolumbie

This coffee comes from a small farmer that are a members of Café Occidente Cooperative in Nariño region. This cooperative was founded in 1977 with only 50 members, located principally in the municipalities of Sandoná and Pasto. Today, it currently has 1,670 members, 18 different purchasing points and eight farm supply stores in 12 municipalities of Western Nariño. In opposite to other regions in Colombia, in Nariño they can have extremely dry conditions during the harvest time, and humidity in the area can be low. This together with really high altitudes definitely affects the flavour profiles and make them different from any other Colombian coffees. The coffee from Nariño is generally fully washed, meaning pulped and fermented the traditional way. The farmer will have a small beneficio, a small manual or electric pulper and a fermentation tank. They pulp the cherries in the afternoon. The coffees are going straight from the pulper in to the fermentation tank. It can sit there from one to two days, depending on the temperature. For the smallholders in regions like Narino the coffees are commonly sun dried in parabolic dryers that almost works as green houses.