My Friend’s Coffee
Los Angeles, CA, USA
This anaerobic natural from Tolima, Colombia flirts with being too good. It's sugar-sweet, tropical bright, and packed—as the name suggests—with notes of Guava and Banana. It comes via our direct relationship with one of the world's best farms, El Vergel Estate. To call El Vergel's coffees mind-blowing underplays their complexity. They're flavor-bomb brews that smack of prodigy production. So what makes El Vergel's "Guava Banana" so good? Well, first, there's the coffee itself: a blue-chip batch of pure Caturra. The quality of the harvest alone is enough to elevate the brew, but the processing kicks the whole thing into an otherworldly space. Shady Bayter, El Vergel's boundary-pushing producer, describes his method as "Anaerobic Natural," but the label minimizes the complexity. First, El Vergel put the crop through a 60-hour, temperature-controlled, oxygen-suppressed fermentation. Once the coffee reached target PH levels, the El Vergel crew went about drying it, halting the process at different moisture levels. These pauses allowed the coffee to dwell, increasing complexity and teasing out explosive flavors. Next came a silo stage to bring the beans down to finishing moisture levels. Finally, the coffee was set to rest for a 45-day homogenizing period, yielding uniformity of flavor. The tropical notes in this Guava Banana sing like Opera stars; they're loud, stirring, and wonderfully defining. But there's much more to this cup than island fruit. The processing yields flavors that recall a Framboise, a signature pairing of raspberry sugars, and delicate fermentation. There's chocolate on the finish, but not the usual uppercut dark you get from most Colombian crops. Instead, it lands like a Swiss chocolatier's take on a champagne truffle. The flavors are remarkable in isolation, but the gestalt becomes a jaw-dropping affair. We could go on, but it's probably better just to leave it like so: Grab a bag, because coffee doesn't get much better than this.
Banana
Chocolate
Raspberry
Type
Single Origin
Origin
Tolima, Colombia
Roast
Light
Species
Arabica
Varieties
Caturra
Process
Anaerobic Natural Fermentation
Altitude
1500m
Producer
Shady + Elias Bayter
Farm
El Vergel