At Lucia Solis’ Fermentation Training Camp

Alejandra Angel was born in Jardín, Antioquia and grew up on a coffee farm where her father instilled in her a love for coffee. She studied food technology at the University of Antioquia. After graduation, Alejandra worked with a coffee cooperative where she was involved in everything from roasting to QC to sorting. Now, she works for Cafexport at Fincamigos and is focused on enhancing coffee quality through post-harvest processing. She is a certified Q grader and has a Q processing certification. 

Juan Andres Gutierrez, Specialty Supply Chain Coordinator at Sucafina Colombia, sat down with Alejandra to hear about her experience and how she’s applying what she’s learned to post-harvest practices at the farm.

Juan Andres Gutierrez (JAG): What did you hope to learn from the course?

Alejandra Angel (AA): I wanted to learn more about yeast fermentation and doing lactic and citric fermentation, which are completely new for me. I had seen before, or read before, about yeast fermentation, but I had never done either [sic] in the field.

JAG: What methods did you learn and how are they different?

AA: We learned about citric fermentation, lactic fermentation and yeast-inoculated fermentation. Citric fermentation uses lemons or citric acid. The purpose is not to add citric flavor but to get a clean profile. You remove the mucilage in a total of 45 minutes after pulping. So, the main feature is the cleaness of the cup. Lactic fermentation is done with salts. That kills the yeasts, and you just leave the lactic organisms. The main attributes are the sweetness, chocolate notes and a few citric notes. Finally, Yeast inoculation adds formulated yeast, and the profile is more red fruits and florals, a little bit more complex.

JAG: Where were you getting your information about fermentation and processing? What were the limitations on the information that you could get?

AA: You can get some information from the internet, but I feel that people still keep this information secret and they’re not as open to share how it’s actually done. You can’t find information that easily anywhere, at the moment. I had met with other farmers that had some experience in it, but like I said, it wasn’t really in practice - we just talked about it casuallybut didn’t actually do it.

JAG: What have been your biggest challenges to date with achieving successful fermentation?

AA: For me, it’s been processing different varieties. We have 8 varieties at Fincamigos: Laurina, SL28, Cenicafe-1, Sudan Rume, Geisha, Java, Typica and Castillo. They all behave very differently, so it’s been two years of learning and getting to know each variety and how it behaves in fermentation and drying. The biggest challenge has been finding the right recipe for each variety to produce the best profile. Regarding fermentation, it’s a field I think you can never stop learning about.

JAG: Did the course fulfill a specific need or question that you had?

AA: Mostly, I went in with an open mind, but I had different questions. For example, how to use yeast in Geisha fermentation or if it was possible to improve a coffee through fermentation from an 83-point cup to something more elevated. I wrote down the questions I had before attending so that I could get the most from the course. I had another specific question about wastewater from processing: how can we process this byproduct for proper discharge, given that it has other microorganisms, like yeast, added to it?

JAG: What did you learn about wastewater processing?

A: I learned from Lucia that the yeasts are beneficial in wastewater because they help to break down the matter. It helps in the decomposition stage. The salts that are used for lactic fermentation, those affect the wastewater because it leaves bacteria in the water and so you have to treat it differently. For me, I learned that lactic fermentation in my context isn’t an option, because I would need to have a separate water treatment system in place just to treat that water.

JAG: What were some of the most surprising things you learned in the course?

A: The cupping was really great, because in the cupping, we cupped two coffees from the same day lot that had been processed differently, and the change in profile from one to the other was super evident. It was really surprising to actually taste the result of yeast in fermentation.

Another thing I learned was that you don’t really need fancy or expensive equipment in order to do this type of fermentation. It’s very accessible for anyone with very simple tools. So, Lucia was talking about a water tank. In the countryside, they collect rainwater, and you can use the same kind of water tank: you just put plastic on top of it and you can create the perfect conditions for anaerobic fermentation. 

Another surprising thing for me was learning the difference between aerobic and anaerobic fermentation because I have heard different things from different people.

JAG: How does the size of the tank impact fermentation?

AA: Lucia taught us to standardize the volume that we ferment per barrel in order to recreate that recipe. Standardizing the size of the fermentation tank makes it easier to replicate the profile.

JAG: Did you have any opportunities to learn from other attendees and if so, what did you learn?

AA: For me, it’s the thing that I most enjoyed from the experience: meeting people from all over the world. There were 3 producers: someone from Colombia, someone from Thailand and someone from Hawaii. These were all very different styles of production and agronomic practices, very different regions. The producers shared images of our own plantations, processing methods and we explained a little bit about what we did in our own fermentation protocol, which I think was great. There were roasters. I met this woman-roaster, and I thought she was super badass. We really had a great connection, and we shared a lot of information. I was just wowed by the amount of coffee that she roasts in a year. We found that we had a common opinion about Laurina - that it’s one of the hardest varieties to roast. There were some cuppers. There were 2-3 people who just joined the workshop out of curiosity, they didn’t have any coffee background but just wanted to learn more about coffee. The group was very diverse. Everyone brought the coffee that they had access to, so throughout the week, there was a lot of sharing of coffees. There were about 40 different types of coffees that we tried over that week. It was like having a global cupping. One thing I learned from the producer in Hawaii is that he uses a screen to remove green cherry from ripe cherry - a very specific screen. I thought that was very interesting and innovative and very easy to apply for myself.

JAG: How will you apply the things that you’ve learned and what will you do differently?

AA: I’m looking into improving the selection of the cherry. Even though I think that we have a really good selection process right now, there’s still room for improvement. We still have a few immature beans that enter the tanks, but I noticed that the impact of these under or overripe beans is huge in the development of the profiles. So that affects further down the line. Having different maturations will affect not only the profile but also the evenness in the drying. For example, in an overripe bean, the drying is much quicker than with a ripe cherry that’s right on target. For me, this is very important because my goal this year is to produce a coffee that scores 90 points, and this is very important to getting there. So, what I’m going to do is do smaller lots, like day lots, processing individually in order to have more control over the mass. Those will be nanolots, and I’ll control cherry selection, drying process and fermentation time better.

Alejandra’s attendance at this fermentation training camp was sponsored by Sucafina Colombia and by The Center, a global learning community designed for passionate coffee people at every stage of the coffee supply chain. Visit The Center’s website to see their current courses, listen to podcasts and more.

We’re excited to see how Alejandra implements her new knowledge at Fincamigos and to taste the tangible results in future lots. For those interested in learning more about the fermentation training camps, Lucia does plan to offer additional sessions in the future. Check out her website for more information.