Colombia and Cappuccino

First, I've decided that we should push back the showing of the film The Perfect Cappuccino to the evening of Thursday, September 10 at 7p.  It lasts 90 minutes and then we'll (hopefully) have a live video chat with Amy Ferraris, the filmmaker.  Stay tuned for details.  

The coffee experiments are going really good.  I skyped with Cristina a couple days ago and we talked about all that is happening with these developments.  She told me the first sample was with red Maragogipe dried on concrete, and it was really great.  The second sample Ariel used yellow Maragogipe (they ripen yellow instead of red), dried on raised beds and covered with a cloth.  She said it wasn't as good- cooled more astringent and green.  She thinks it's because it's harder to tell if the yellows are ripe or not, so more unripe could've gotten in.  Also the cloth he used to cover the coffee wasn't porous enough and the coffee may have gotten too hot.  So he did another sample with red Maragogipe dried on raised beds and covered with a more porous cloth.  She hadn't tasted it yet when I talked to her.

The first two samples Ariel milled at his mill on the farm.  The sample I got still had silverskin on the outside of the beans and on that was a lot of sugars, so when I roasted it, it suddenly looked like it was burning.  This third sample, Ariel brought to Cristina's father's dry mill in Medellin.  They have better equipment and she's hoping they can polish the silverskin off the coffee, so it looks more like a washed coffee and roasts better.  She was hoping to get that lot of coffee in two days ago, after I talked to her.  Then she was going to roast and cup it hopefully today.  This could be the one.  If it works out, there's a possibility she can get us a few bags.  And THAT would be awesome.  Right now, we're the only people in the world who are even talking about natural coffee from Colombia.  The FNC (Colombian Coffee Federation) is not going to let this coffee out of the country if they find out about it, so the key is to mix the bags in with a container of other coffee and try to sneak it through.

She told me that she had the same experiment done at one of her father's farms in Concordia, and the coffee was a Caturrra variety.  She said it was sweet, a lot brighter (higher acidity) and not as complex as the Maragogipe.  Could be interesting though.

I asked her about having Alfredo do this with his coffee.  She said she asked him to and he had been too busy with the beginning of their harvest.  But she asked him again and she was hoping that he had done it.  This could actually change the face of Colombian coffee forever.  And we're involved.  Exciting.

I can't wait to taste the next samples.