Cultivation
Smallholders cultivate Castillo, Caturra and CENICAFE-1 varieties on coffee plots. The main harvest runs from September to October and the fly crop from March to May.
In addition to coffee, many also cultivate sugarcane, avocado and plantains.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Coffee is selectively handpicked and typically processed on individual farms. Most producers use a drum or hand-crank pulper to pulp ripe, red cherry. Once pulped, parchment is fermented in bags or buckets.
Depending on the weather conditions fermentation can range from about 12 to up to 48 hours. Due to the small daily harvests, some producers will add several layers of wet parchment over the course of a few days. This can lower the pH of the fermenting coffee and can add complexity to the final cup profile. Following fermentation, the coffee is washed in clean water. Then, parchment is dried in parabolic dryers, raised beds or patios.
Supremo Grade
Screen sizes remain fairly uniform across countries but grade names are often unique to the country of origin. In the Colombian grading system, Supremo is the largest size bean.
The process of separating beans by size is a crucial stage of the dry milling process. A screen grading machine has a series of screens stacked on top of each other. Green coffee is fed into the machine, and as the screens are shaken, beans that are smaller than holes on a specific screen will fall through to a lower screen until they reach a screen with holes too small for them to fit.
Supremo is typically screen sizes 17 to 18.
Coffee in Colombia
Colombia has been producing and exporting coffee renowned for their full body, bright acidity and rich aftertaste, since the early 19th century.
Colombia boasts a wide range of climates and geographic conditions that produce their own unique flavors in coffee. This also means that harvest times can vary quite a bit. In fact, between all its different regions, Colombia produces fresh crop nearly all year round.
The increasing focus on the specialty industry is changing the way traders and farmers do business. It is becoming more common for farmers to isolate the highest quality beans in their lots to market separately. These higher-quality lots are often sold under specific brands or stories.
Besides its wide variety of cup profiles, Colombia has quickly expanded its certification options over the past 10 years. The most common certifications available are Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and Organic.