Description
This coffee is a honey processed lot top lot from our friend Joey over @ Cafe Kreyol. Joey spends the bulk of his time heading into very remote regions that grow great coffee but lack processing equipment or knowledge. He has worked for years bringing operations up to high end premium production, all while producing a very sustainable environment one can feel good about. Where we do not have personal sourcing, we are more than happy to bring Joey’s fantastic offerings to the table to help support his awesome work. Kreyol’s offerings include some of the Haitian & Dominican coffees as well as these wonderful Bolivians.
Some of his best work in our opinion has been with these Bolivian coffees. Although Bolivian offerings have been less rare the last couple of seasons, these offerings are real gems. High scoring balanced cups with beautiful new-wave processing bringing new flavors and cup profiles to classic South American tastes.
This is a single producer lot out of the APCERL Co-op. Fernando has been highlighted for producing exceptional coffee cherry with impeccable picking practices.
Tasting Notes: Best served light to medium roasted. Crisp, clean, slightly fruity and sweet: a more exotic cup with higher acidity than the washed processed offerings. Lighter roasts show sweet lemony floral brightness, with just a hint of soft fruit, balanced with a little herbal/nutty tone. Great body and mouthfeel especially for the roast point. This honey processed shined best at the lighter roast points out of all three Bolivian offerings, a great sign of quality. Medium roasts still provide a bit of crisp sweet citric upfront and soft fruit tones as the cup cools, but will develop more of the classic South American profile of creamy and smooth, nutty/chocolaty like tones.
Roasting Notes: A bit higher chaff and roasts a little two toned color wise. Darkens up quickly so make sure you see that expansion in size before cooling if shooting for a lighter roast. The surface of the bean picking up a little sheen is a good mark for the medium roast level. A 3-4 days setup really works some magic on this cup and pops the fruit tones out decently more.
APCERL is a co-op founded on great principals: organized by Cafe Kreyol & the WCS (wildlife conservation society) they organize small producers native to the land on the edge of the Andes mountains, and bordering the Rainforest of the Madidi National Park (Amazon Forest). The land next to their farms is government-protected land, and together our sustainable business model was agreed upon and put into practice.
With the help of WCS, these producers have established a model of Agroforestry, where the top of each hill or mountain remains untouched. Then farming takes place under the untouched canopy on the center portion of the slope, and towards the bottom the land is slightly more cleared and farmed. By using agroforestry, their soil is self regenerating, and extraordinarily sustainable. Not only are these farms certified organic, but they also have been certified Smithsonian Bird Friendly, one of the toughest conservation certifications in existence. Instead of clearing rainforest, Bird Friendly coffees grow underneath shade trees that sequester carbon, fight climate change and provide habitat for birds. Those bird include migratory species whose impressive journeys can take them from the backyards of the U.S. and Canada all the way to coffee farms in Latin America.
Cafe Kreyol worked directly with one team member there, Jorge, who instructed the numerous cooperative members to implement pH testing when picking, washing, and drying the coffee. This created a consistent, sweet, and chocolatey profile. The producers can now maximize their quality as well as safely grow the quantity of their production, allowing them to earn about 300% higher than the fair trade minimum for coffee.
Cafe Kreyol believes farmers should get paid based on the quality of their product and we practice this belief by paying up to 300% higher wages than what Fair Trade requires. This Direct Trade system, that is now the backbone of Cafe Kreyol, believes that quality and sustainability are parallel. Our story continues as we work to alleviate poverty in rural coffee growing regions, one cup at a time.
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