Colombia Planadas Wush Wush Coffee (#007)

About Drip Roasters:Drip Roasters is a micro roastery for specialty coffee founded in Bern, Switzerland. Drip follow a roast philosophy which highlights the aromas specific to certain regions and varieties, achieving this by adapting their roast profiles and roasting light. Founded in mid-2018 by brothers Dennys and Fabian Schmid, quality and sustainability are important to both. Following a set of values, Drip consider sustainable production and processing, as well as fair and as direct trade as possible a basic responsibility. The cost Drip pay for their green coffee is always higher - often drastically - than the Fairtrade minimum cost. With coffee an unbelievably complex and exciting topic, which offers endless facts, tricks and secrets to be discovered, Drip hope you share their same enthusiasm whilst enjoying your coffee.

About This Coffee:Despite its name suggesting a flat area, Finca Planadas is located in the mountainous Tolima region. Known as Colombia’s pantry, Tolima produces more than 70% of the food consumed in the country. The department of Tolima is also among Colombia’s largest coffee-producing regions.

The farm covers 700 hectares of land, whereof 300 ha are preserved forest and 40 ha are dedicated to growing coffee. The remaining area is being cultivated and used for cattle farming. Carlos is really committed to helping the community and protecting the region from being bought up by international companies to create massive plantations and chopping down hundreds of hectares of forests. Monocultures like this are capable of completely destroying the ecosystem. Many coffee producers have been offered good money and therefore sold their not-always-profitable coffee farms to these companies. The people who used to work on these farms were left without jobs. Carlos is trying to offer jobs to as many of them as possible on his farm Planadas, where salaries are 30% above the average in the region. 

Carlos saw great potential in growing the Ethiopian variety Wush Wush. They realized that the climatic conditions on their farm in Tolima are ideal for this variety and that with proper care and good processing techniques a rather unique, high-quality coffee can be produced. The variety had not been seen very often in Colombia until it recently started to attract more attention due to the excellent results some growers were achieving with it. They don't want to make lots of money, but they want to be able to sustain the farm. To do so, their goal is to produce really high quality coffee and to cut middlemen when selling their coffee. 

Cupping Notes:Sweet / Juicy / Strawberries / Other Red Berries /  Tropical Fruits.

Variety:Fermentation, drying, milling and storage – the entire process takes place on the farm. Carlos does a lot of experimenting when it comes to processing their coffees and they are very active in the coffee community, sharing information with other coffee growers in the region and partnering up to improve processing methods. They have been experimenting with the Wush Wush variety and working on different ways to process it for a couple of years and today, they're really happy with the results.

The ripe coffee cherries are washed for 48 hours, during which a natural fermentation takes places, before being depulped (beans being mechanically squeezed out of the cherry). The coffee is washed right after and moved to tanks, in which an anaerobic fermentation takes place. Finally, it's being dried on raised beds.

The post-harvest processing and the special Wush Wush variety of this coffee create a very distinct and crisp cup profile. 

Brewing Recommendations:

• We recommend a fine grind setting (e.g. 17 clicks on the Comandante), quite a bit of turbulence when pouring (faster flow and more circling when pouring) and a recipe with more pours with smaller amounts per pour, for example like this: 18g coffee, 300g water at 94°c, Kalita paper filter, Origami Dripper
• 1st pour (00:00): 50g of water, stir with spoon
• 2nd pour (00:40): pour another 100g
• 3rd pour (01:05): pour another 50g
• 4th pour (01:20): pour another 50g
• 5th pour (01:35): pour another 50g
• 6th pour (01:40): swirl lightly
• Total brew time: 02:40