New Release - Eduardo Chasoy

This beautiful honey processed coffee was produced by Eduardo Chasoy, along with his wife and their son on their 1-hectare farm, Finca Mocoa in the town of Aponte, in north-western Nariño, Colombia.

Eduardo has been recognised as a leader in Aponte’s farming community due to his efforts in educating his colleagues on the benefits of growing coffee for the specialty market. Eduardo is also a big proponent of the ‘honey’ processing method and spends much of his time training other farmers on how to achieve great results with 'honey' processed coffee.

Aponte is incredibly hard to reach, as it is found deep inside the Juanambú Canyon, and sits at a staggeringly high 2,100m above sea level. The region experiences a cool climate and high winds year-round, and sits on very fertile soil, thanks to the nutrient-rich ash constantly shed by nearby Galeras Volcano.

Aponte home to the indigenous Inga people and was once the northernmost point of the Incan empire. Visiting Aponte is a unique experience, since the town operates as an indigenous reserve independent from the Colombian government. On the streets, people continue to wear traditional garments and to speak to each other in the local Inga language, a dialect derived from Quechua (the pre-colonial language of people from the Amazons and the Andean Mountains).

Coffee in Aponte is a relatively profitable and stable crop, and it prevents bigger parcels of land from being used for coca cultivation. Today coffee plays a big role in helping the community as they turn the page on the region’s violent past and build a more sustainable development. Many of those that left the region during the worst part of the conflict in the 90’s have since returned to continue their coffee tradition and rebuild their lives here.

HOW THIS COFFEE WAS PROCESSED

For this 'honey' processed lot, coffee cherries were carefully hand-picked, with several passes needed to ensure only the ripest ones were chosen. These were then pulped at the farm’s wet mill, or ‘micro-beneficio.’ After pulping, coffee was placed on drying beds without being washed, leaving coffee with a layer of mucilage that resembles a glazing of sticky honey (hence the name ‘honey’ processing). This step ensured fermentation occurred as the coffee dried.

Thanks to Aponte’s cool, windy climate and high elevations, coffee generally dries more quickly and evenly than in lower parts of Colombia. This leads to more consistency in the coffees produced, and  cleaner, more complex flavours in the cup. 

WHAT WE LOVE ABOUT THIS COFFEE

Will's favourite thing about this coffee is it's made a stellar Cold Drip, in fact it's the single farm coffee we used in the current batch of our Cold Drip cans. If you've tried a can, you'll recognise the vibrant, clean flavour! The team also loves this clean and sweet coffee on batch, or even better... Aeropress, inverted method.