Colombian – Elkin Guzman – Innovation Series – Finca El Mirador – Archived

Taste: Sweet and savory with tart lemon, toffee and sugar cane juice.

Roast: Medium/Dark to dark roast – lengthening the development phase (dry-end to just before 2nd crack) by decreasing energy (lower heat and/or increase fan speed) intensifies the fruit flavors and sweetness. No sugar needed in this cup!

About: Elkin Guzman is a young and pioneering coffee producer in Colombia. Hailing from Pitalito, Huila, he is extremely intelligent and curious, using new technology and techniques in a constant effort to improve quality across the board—not simply in the cup, but also in terms of yield, cultivation, and efficiency in production. Elkin’s attention to detail and capacity to buck convention has set him apart from other producers, and he is a leader among his community as well as a standout among Colombian growers in general.

Elkin and his mother tend to Finca El Mirador in Pitalito, where they grow a range of coffee varieties and have done extensive experimentation with processing: Elkin believes in using technology to collect and track data such as the optimum point of ripeness in the coffee cherry for harvesting. He uses a Brix meter to determine when the fruit is ready for picking, and prefers the harvest to happen at 23–25° Brix. He has decided that picking should only be done in the morning hours, as the coffee plants are not as stressed as in the afternoons and evenings. He believes that this concentrates the sugar development in the cherry in the early hours.

This particular lot is an example of Elkin’s many experiments: The coffee is harvested at 24° Brix, and depulped the same day that it’s picked, as well as sorted using a zaranda, a kind of screen-size sorter that removes lower-quality beans.Then, Elkin put the coffee through what he is calling an “anaerobic melazas” fermentation, “melazas” meaning “molasses” in Spanish. The depulped coffee is dry-fermented in open air for 18 hours. Then the beans are put in covered tanks to ferment for 24–36 hours, with molasses added to the beans to provide “energy” or sugars for the yeasts and bacteria to break down.

Elkin is one of the most promising producers we have encountered, and one of the most passionate: He aims to continue growing, learning, and improving both quality and output, and he is undoubtedly one to watch from this famous coffee-producing country.

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