Colombia Finca Tamana Caturra

Expect a caramel like (or panela if you are Colombian) sweetness with a clean and smooth mouthfeel and subtle fruity flavours.

Ships within 1 week after roast date
100% specialty arabica coffee beans only
Tim Wendelboe's coffee beans are at their peak 2 to 3 weeks after roasting

Tim's Note: 

When Elias Roa bought Finca Tamana in 2011 most of the farm was planted with the two cultivars Caturra and Variedad Colombia. Since then the Caturra trees have been attacked by leaf rust almost every year and the quality and production has therefore been a bit up and down. The Variedad Colombia is resistant to leaf rust and has consistently been tasting better compared to the Caturra over the years. That is why we have recommended Elias to replant most of his Caturra trees with either resistant hybrid cultivars or better tasting traditional cultivars like Bourbon and SL28.

There are still a few lots planted with Caturra left on the farm and probably always will be, but since the production is very small and the flavour is very similar to the Variedad Colombia we are normally blending the two based on harvest date and quality. Last harvest we identified two small lots of  Caturra that tasted really good. It made up enough volume so that it made sense to separate them from the Variedad Colombia.

That means this lot is from two single days of picking from one lot at the farm. I found this coffee to have a really sweet and smooth texture with subtle notes red fruits and with the classic «panela» or caramel flavour that the coffees from Huila are so well known for.

Cultivar:

Caturra is a natural dwarf mutation of the Bourbon cultivar. It was discovered on a plantation in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil sometime between 1915 and 1918. It was until recently the most commonly grown coffee in Colombia due to its good yield potential, quality and ability to be grown in intensive systems with little to no shade.

Unfortunately it is highly susceptible to leaf rust and that is the reason why Cenicafe (the Colombian coffee research institute) started developing a resistant hybrid cultivar back in the late 1960's that became Variedad Colombia. Variedad Colombia was released in the 1980's and is a crossing between Caturra and the Timor Hybrid ( A natural crossing between C. Canephora (Robusta)  and C. Arabica.)

Process:

Picking and sorting

• The coffee is selectively hand picked by hired pickers under supervision of Elias. Cherries are hand-sorted before they are processed to make sure only ripe cherries are processed together.

Depupling, fermenting & washing

• The coffee cherries are stored in the cherry hopper in open air over night before the coffee is de-pulped in the morning. After de-pulping, the parchment coffee with the mucilage on is fermented for 24 hours in clean stainless steel tanks. The fermentation is stopped when the mucilage is easy to clean off and before the coffee flavour is influenced by negative fermentation flavours. The coffee is then washed in clean water by using an eco-mill which is a mechanical mucilage remover. The eco-mill reduces water waste from the average 50-100 litres of water per kilo of coffee with traditional washing methods to only 0,5 – 1 litre per kilo. After washing the coffees are soaked for 24 hours in clean water in tiled cement tanks. All floaters (beans with low density) are removed during the washing and soaking process.

Drying

• After the soaking stage the clean parchment coffee is dried in parabolic dryers and drying beds covered with shade nets to prevent the beans from over heating. The coffees are raked throughout the day to ensure even drying. Drying normally takes from 20 to 30 days and once the moisture content is below 11% it gets packed and stored in air tight grain pro bags. All our coffees from Finca Tamana are vacuum packed before it is shipped to Norway.

Brewing Recipe:

Filter

• We strongly recommend using the correct measurements and brewing techniques when you brew our coffees. Use a digital scale both to measure water and coffee in order to get consistent results, and we recommend using between 60 to 70 grams of coffee per litre (1000g) of water, depending on the brewing method, water quality and coffee used.

Espresso

• We strongly recommend using VST filter baskets. Both the 18g, 20g and the 22g basket is great for our coffee. The VST filters makes it a lot easier to extract the espresso properly which gives a lot more sweetness in the cup. They are also more or less identical to each other which makes it easy to be more consistent when brewing on several groups at the same time. You can buy the filters on our webshop, just make sure they fit your machine (ours fits all La Marzocco machines and machines with 58mm filter baskets). With the VST 18g filter basket, we recommend the following brewing parameters: 18-19g freshly-ground coffee, 25-35s brewing time, 35-38g of final brew liquid in the cup, 93°C-94°C brew water temperature.