Gold Standard Coffee: Tolima, Colombia
The Breck Coffee Gold Standard line is the pride and joy of our Head Roaster, Jonathan. These are the highest of the high quality beans he has roasted, tinkered with, cupped, and adjusted ever so slightly each time to achieve absolute perfection, with the goal of creating a truly exceptional coffee. These are small-batch and limited edition coffees. We order these coffees in 35-kilo burlap sacks and when they’re gone, they’re gone.
If you geek out about what’s in your cup as much as Jonathan does, then this coffee is the one for you. Let Jon do all of the work, and you just sit back, relax and enjoy the fruits of his labor.
Coffee is an art and a science, and Jonathan is the (sometimes mad) scientist bringing you his most prized roasts, always the highest quality, highest standards and limited edition. When choosing coffees to offer with our Gold Standard label, we are searching for a few things. We are searching for transparency, direct trade, hand-sorted, and “single x 4” beans.
Our first Gold Standard Coffee comes from Tolima, Colombia and our friends at El Vergel Estates. We first met the Bayter Brothers, Shady and Elias, in Bogota in October 2019 and the love, passion, and knowledge they have for growing coffee is unparalleled. They are constantly experimenting to produce the best green coffee in the world and have devoted countless hours and resources to developing an exceptional level of quality. They also approach sustainability within their operations as a “mindset you have from day one.”
El Vergel Estates’ dedication to sustainability extends to the final product, their farm, their community and the earth. They go to great lengths to recycle their products and reuse them throughout the farm. One of the most overlooked sustainability factors is water. Water is not only used for watering the plants on the farm but also for washing the coffee. Tons of water can be used over the course of a harvest and can cause damage to the local topography, washing away the landscape. Through proper recycling techniques, El Vergel Estates has been able to drastically minimize the amount of water used and conserve the water consumption in their surrounding area. This keeps us from draining our springs and creating a surplus of drinking water for the whole community to benefit from.
We have been extremely impressed with the Bayter family, their farm and their incredible coffee throughout the past year and a half of working together. These brothers have an admirable amount of knowledge about the green bean process. The care and attention they’ve put into ensuring they provide the highest quality green beans, in the most eco-friendly way possible, was a key factor in wanting to work with them to provide our first Gold Standard coffee.
The family farm sits on El Vergel, or Black Mountain, an inactive volcano that has created extremely nutrient-rich soil. Shady and Elias’ family farm is the collection of five farms spanning 400 hectares ranging in altitudes and growing different coffees throughout. This project was started in 1995 by the Bayter brothers and their mom, Marta. Each and every green coffee bean is single-origin, hand-picked, and carefully inspected by one of their tenured pickers, some of whom have worked on the farm for 20+ years.
This particular varietal was planted in 2016 at 1,350 meters. It is red and yellow caturra planted in the microlot, Tico Pepe, and a natural process. This natural process is two steps and produces a more flavorful coffee in comparison with a washed process. It has more flavor and is more expressive versus other kinds of processes that are quicker and take less effort to perform.
After the cherries are picked, they undergo a two-step fermentation process that begins once the cherries are peeled. The first is an anaerobic fermentation that takes place in wide, short tanks that allows for the most cherries to be exposed as possible for an initial oxidation of around 14 hours to accelerate the fermentation (due to higher temperatures). Afterwards, the cherries are introduced to El Vergel’s special steel tanks for another 48-52 hours of anaerobic submerged fermentation to chill the cherries after the previous fermentation. This produces a slower process of fermentation that aims to develop more light and soft notes in the coffee profile.
After the fermentation is complete, the coffee is taken to be intermittently dried for 12 to 15 days between raised beds. Finally, the beans head to the milling process where the last layer of husk is removed from each bean and separated by size and weight. The final process is done by hand by a group of women who have been affected by the guerilla wars. The coffee is dumped into grain pro bags and shipped to Jon where he begins the roasting and cupping experimentation to find the perfect combination to ensure all of the hard work Shady and Elias have put into the growing process shows in the final finished roasted product.
The Bayter brothers have worked with this variety intensely and have perfected growing this bean to its highest potential. This expertise shines through your cup full of unique tasting notes of red fruits, red apple and sweet guava jam - the result of native guava trees in the region.
We are so excited to share with you what Jon has put countless hours of love and attention into roasting after the boys in Colombia sent us their high quality green beans. To try this coffee for yourself, head here!