Manizales Supremo FW

Located in the heart of Eje Cafetero (Coffee Axis), Manizales has the ideal climate and soil conditions for cultivating high-quality coffees. Coffee farming was introduced to Manizales in the mid-1800s when 14 families settled in the region to grow coffee. Today, more than 100,000 coffee farming families live in Manizales.

Thanks to their proximity to Nevado del Ruiz, a volcano near Manizales, soils are volcanic ash. Farms sit at 1,300 to 1,950 meters above sea level. Farms are, on average, smaller than 2 hectares.

Since farms are small, most labor is done by the family. Farmers selectively handpick ripe, red cherry and process it on their farms. They pulp cherry on small, hand crank pulpers and ferment coffee in tanks. Following fermentation, they wash parchment in clean water and lay it to dry on marquesinas. They rake parchment frequently to ensure even drying.

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.