TEN SPEED

TEN SPEED // COLOMBIA

NARRATIVE: This coffee comes to us through Coffee Quest, a Colombia based exporter/importer that has been fostering relationships with farmers and increasing their coffee quality for years. Our friend Stephen has been an integeral part of all the work happening and works hand in hand with producers like Ernedis. 

Finca El Paraiso from Ernedis Rodriguez is a beautiful farm about 12km east of the town Gigante in Huila. One of the most remarkable aspects is that Ernedis treats the farm as a company. Naming it "the company" during conversation as well as maintaining a very well kept coffee area. Coffee farming is often a family business and with Ernedis it's no different. He gets a lot of support from his wife and children. The family is included in the operations and his daughters have been growing towards jobs within the coffee sector (Quality Grader and Business Administration). Ernedis Rodriguez is one of our favorite farmers in Colombia. He's young, extremely motivated to produce a great coffee and easy to communicate with. We always come up with crazy ideas for experiments with different types of processing, like extended fermentations in different ways (aerobic, anaerobic, partially in cherry, etc.)

He's always interested in working with our ideas and executes them in the best way possible. In the 2020 season he invested in a "Lavador", an Eco-pulper that uses a minimum amount of water to take of the pulp from the parchment. We see excellent results with these machines that use friction to remove pulp. Remarkable; Ernedis us one of the few farmers we see that recycles his coffee pulp correctly. Making sure the pulp is captured in a basin/pool without direct contact with the soil and using techniques to dry out and compost the organic matter.