Colombia – El Recreo, Washed (Regenerative Organic Certified) Espresso

Blood orange, honeycomb and blueberry, with a creamy mouthful and excellent balance.

• Organic
• Grown Under
  Shade
• Selective
  Hand Picking
• Glyphosate
  Free

• Intro
• Technical Details
• Recipe
• Producer Profile

• We are pleased to introduce a perfectly balanced Washed Caturra microlot, produced by a group of seven smallholder farmers on the slopes of the Vereda El Recreo near Bilbao, Tolima. Located in the stunning, rugged terrain of the central mountain range in Tolima between 1,650 and 1,800 masl, this is one of our favourite appellations in Colombia, producing consistently crisp, sweet and vibrant coffees.

   This coffee is the also the first Regenerative Organic Certified coffee to be imported into Australia. We are thrilled to champion  Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) as the pinacle of certifiable organic farming and the only certification that guarantees the highest level of soil health, biodiversity and farm community welfare.

  This lot is 100% Caturra variety, which have been hand picked and washed on site at each smallholder farm, using a traditional washed method. After processing, the parchment is carried to “elbas” (Colombian coverable drying patios) to guarantee even drying. 

• • Producer 7 producers from the Vereda el Recreo community
  • Altitude 1,650 - 1,800 masl
  • Region Bilbao town, Planadas, Tolima
  • Processing Fully Washed
  • Varieties Caturra
  • Harvest April 2024
  • Roasted On IMF RM60
• • 20.0g

    ground coffee dose

  • 29

    seconds

  • 44g

    espresso shot yield

  • 93.0º

    brew temperature

  This recipe was developed on a La Marzoco Linea PB, using a Anfim SPII+ grinder. We encourage you to play around to meet your personal tastes and equipment setup.

• Based in and around the town of Bilbao, deep in the Central Colombian mountain range, this remote community has overcome incredible adversity over the past thirty years to become examples of sustainable and ethical coffee production.

  Tolima, from the early-1960s until around 2012, was a dangerous and disrupted area due to the strong foothold that FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a rebel paramilitary force) held in Tolima, Huila and Narino. The mountainous areas near where Bilbao is located were essentially run outside the legal and economic structures of the rest of Colombia, and crime including the drug trade were rife throughout the region.

  With the decline of FARC’s strength between 2007 and 2011, the region began to stabilize and open up to the rest of Colombia. This provided an incentive for producers in the region to start focusing on producing exportable crops, including transitioning from coca to cacao and coffee. The previously hermetic region was not exposed to industrial agribusiness and as such was well-primed for organic agriculture to flourish. Producers in the region had already been using traditional and pre-industrial farming techniques without synthetic inputs, and, when combined with new information and education regarding coffee preparation and production flowing from the established northern Colombian coffee regions, propelled these farms to the forefront of productive, clean and top quality coffee farming in the whole of Latin America.