About This Coffee
Finca Los Lirios sits at 1,750 meters above sea level. Owner José Ángel Rivera partners with Manos al Grano, a non-profit organization founded in 2021 to support coffee pickers. Manos al Grano provides training for coffee pickers and legalizes their work by paying them legally through a bank. Laborers also receive benefits like health insurance and a pension. With Manos al Grano, José receives agronomic support and works on improving his coffee quality through Good Agricultural Practices.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Trained pickers with Manos al Grano selectively handpick ripe, red cherry and deliver it to José’s on-farm wet mill. Cherry is left to ferment lightly for 22 hours and is then pulped and placed in tanks to ferment for 20 hours. Following fermentation, parchment is washed in clean water and dried in mechanical dryers. Parchment is dried at low temperature in a mechanical dryer for 27 hours.
Azahar
Azahar Colombia works directly with producers to source excellent, traceable coffee from Colombia’s best producing regions. They pride themselves on transparent relationships that improve incomes and quality.
In addition to their exporting arm, Azahar also operates a roastery in Quindío and several cafés in Bogotá that serve superb locally-produced coffees to Colombian consumers.
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.