Our featured coffee for May is an amazing fresh arrival from innovative Colombian coffee producer Wilton Benitez. Wilton has been producing boundary-pushing coffees for years, and this thermal shock, advanced anaerobic red bourbon lot is no exception!
We finally got to meet Wilton at the recent Specialty Coffee Expo in Chicago earlier this month, and had a chance to cup several lots from his farm, Granja Paraiso 92, located in Piendamo in the Cauca region of Colombia. He and his team have been producing award-winning coffees for years, and are at the forefront of alternative processing.
The cherries for this coffee come from Benitez's farm La Macarena, and are selected for ripeness, size, and density before being sealed in an anaerobic environment in a bioreactor and exposed to high temperatures for a short amount of time—a thermal shock—before being cooled back down to room temperature and continuing the processing. This process both increases the density of the coffee, enhances the sweetness of the cup.
After the thermal shock, the coffee is sterilized with ozonated water and UV light and is fermented for 48 hours. During this fermentation, yeast is added to enhance the flavors naturally occuring in the cup and the coffee continues fermentation for another 68 hours. After this fermentation is done, the coffee is washed and dried at exactly 100 degrees fahrenheit for two days.
The resulting cup is absolutely full of fresh strawberry flavors, with hibiscus and green apple notes too—it's one of our all-time favorite coffees, and we can't wait for you to experience it!
