VERY LIMITED RUN - Coming Soon!
8oz bags only and available on Pourover at ZenDen!
Fika’s first co-fermented coffee. What is a co-fermented coffee? All coffee goes through a degree of natural fermentation after it is harvested. A “Washed” coffee soaks in large tanks of water before stripping away the fruit, where a degree of fermentation takes place. On the other end of the spectrum, a “Natural” coffee is one in which the fruit is left on the seed after harvest to dry, and a different degree of fermentation takes place. In a co-ferment, coffee is soaked (fermented) with other ingredients - usually a local fruit - and takes on some of the flavor characteristics of that ingredient. That’s the basics, and farmers have been experimenting a lot with diffferent variations of this process.
This lot uses the Nitro process, Café Uba's own take on fermentation. The coffee ferments inside a bioreactor along with fruit must, starter cultures, and culturing lixiviates, while the oxygen inside gets replaced with nitrogen to create a modified atmosphere around the beans. The team tracks temperature, pH, and Brix levels throughout to keep the fermentation inside a defined range. Watermelon is part of the co-ferment on this lot, and it shows up clearly in the cup alongside cantaloupe and caramel notes. After fermentation, the coffee dries on raised beds for 25 days, then finishes with five days of mechanical drying.
Café Uba backs this work with outside research. Along with Cenicafé and Universidad de los Andes, the team published a study on the fermentation methods developed at Finca Milán, looking at how starter cultures change the microbial community during fermentation and the cup that results.
VERY LIMITED RUN - Coming Soon!
8oz bags only and available on Pourover at ZenDen!
Fika’s first co-fermented coffee. What is a co-fermented coffee? All coffee goes through a degree of natural fermentation after it is harvested. A “Washed” coffee soaks in large tanks of water before stripping away the fruit, where a degree of fermentation takes place. On the other end of the spectrum, a “Natural” coffee is one in which the fruit is left on the seed after harvest to dry, and a different degree of fermentation takes place. In a co-ferment, coffee is soaked (fermented) with other ingredients - usually a local fruit - and takes on some of the flavor characteristics of that ingredient. That’s the basics, and farmers have been experimenting a lot with diffferent variations of this process.
This lot uses the Nitro process, Café Uba's own take on fermentation. The coffee ferments inside a bioreactor along with fruit must, starter cultures, and culturing lixiviates, while the oxygen inside gets replaced with nitrogen to create a modified atmosphere around the beans. The team tracks temperature, pH, and Brix levels throughout to keep the fermentation inside a defined range. Watermelon is part of the co-ferment on this lot, and it shows up clearly in the cup alongside cantaloupe and caramel notes. After fermentation, the coffee dries on raised beds for 25 days, then finishes with five days of mechanical drying.
Café Uba backs this work with outside research. Along with Cenicafé and Universidad de los Andes, the team published a study on the fermentation methods developed at Finca Milán, looking at how starter cultures change the microbial community during fermentation and the cup that results.