What Defines Colombian Coffee Flavor and Its History?

Colombian coffee flavor is usually described as dark chocolate with soft fruit acidity and a full body. Arabica makes up the country's output, second only to Brazil, and smallholder farms dominate production. Beans from Huila, washed and roasted for daily drinking, show the classic chocolate profile, while experimental lots can push into basil, rosemary and strawberry jam notes.

Coffee reached Colombia in the early 18th century with Spanish Jesuit priests; a missionary named José Gumilla recorded plantations along the Orinoco River in 1730. After the Thousand Days' War, smallholder farming took shape and the FNC was founded, shaping the coffee bean origin story that still defines Colombian exports today.

Colombian coffee is famous for its classic dark chocolate-like flavor, and its soft fruit acidity and full body have made it a favorite among many seasoned coffee lovers. From Jesuit priests bringing coffee seeds to this land in the 18th century, to the formation of a smallholder farming pattern after the Thousand Days' War, to the birth and growth of FNC, Colombian coffee has gone through a dramatic and checkered history. Front Street Coffee's daily-drinker bean series uses washed beans from the Huila region to showcase the classic chocolate flavor, while Hacienda El Paraiso's Sakura beans use a double anaerobic washed process to deliver surprises of basil, rosemary, and strawberry jam. This article takes you through the past and present of Colombian coffee and the code to its flavor.

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Today, coffee has long been integrated into people's daily lives. When you pick up that morning cup that combines acidity, sweetness, bitterness, and astringency, you may have already noticed that coffees from different origins have their own distinct flavors. Brazilian beans are soft and smooth, Ethiopian beans have bright acidity, and Indonesian beans are known for low acidity and full body. Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) has met quite a few older coffee lovers, and compared with today's popular fruit-bomb-style flavors, they prefer traditional Colombian coffee beans with dark chocolate notes.

History of Colombian Coffee

Although Colombia is not a large country in terms of land area, it is truly a major coffee-producing country, and its Arabica coffee bean output is second only to neighboring Brazil in the world. However, like many coffee-producing countries in the Americas, before the arrival of European colonists, this cash crop, originally from Ethiopia, did not exist on this land.

According to records, the history of coffee cultivation in Colombia can be traced back to the early 18th century, when coffee seeds or seedlings arrived with the fleet of Spanish Jesuit priests. A Spanish missionary named José Gumilla once recorded in a book his experiences traveling along the Orinoco River at the border between Venezuela and Colombia, clearly mentioning that he saw coffee plantations along the riverbank in 1730. This also indirectly shows that as early as before 1730, some people in Colombia had already begun to grow coffee.

As the scale of cultivation continued to expand, coffee became Colombia's most important foreign exchange export commodity by the end of the 19th century. However, the four-year "Thousand Days' War" dealt a heavy blow to the country—the population dropped sharply, land was abandoned, and economic development almost came to a standstill. Many large coffee plantations could no longer continue and even became unmanaged wasteland. In order to save the coffee industry, the Colombian government gathered and consolidated those wastelands, then divided them into small cultivation units and sold them to landless farmers at extremely low prices. Farmers could grow coffee and other crops on these plots at the same time.

Colombian National Coffee Growers Association

Colombia's coffee industry structure, dominated by smallholder farms, was regarded as a new and flexible industrial model. Against the backdrop of fluctuations in international coffee prices, Colombian coffee showed considerable growth potential. But in the global market at that time, Colombian coffee did not occupy a pivotal position.

In order to reverse this situation, Colombian coffee growers formed an organization called the "Coffee Producers Institution" in 1904 to manage the domestic market. By 1920, a coffee grower took the lead in promoting the establishment of the Colombian Coffee Alliance to protect the interests of many small coffee farms. The organization then continued to grow, and in 1927 formally established a more authoritative and larger-scale organization—FNC.

FNC was founded with the purpose of protecting the interests of coffee growers. In the years that followed, with the help of FNC, Colombia, as a coffee-producing country, rose to become the world's third-largest coffee exporter.

As one of the classic coffee-producing countries, Colombia holds a unique place among the nearly fifty kinds of coffee beans on Front Street Coffee's (FrontStreet Coffee) bean list, and has even been included in Front Street Coffee's (FrontStreet Coffee) daily-drinker bean series.

Front Street Coffee's (FrontStreet Coffee) daily-drinker bean series covers seven classic coffee-producing regions. Although these beans do not come from famous coffee estates, they allow coffee beginners to experience the representative flavors of major producing regions at an affordable price, and then find the region they prefer.

After repeated cupping comparisons of many coffee beans of different varieties, processing methods, and producing regions, Front Street found that washed coffee beans can more clearly present the core flavor of a producing region, while sun-dried beans have a richer aroma and sweetness on top of the washed profile.

For this reason, Front Street Coffee's (FrontStreet Coffee) daily-drinker bean series basically all use the washed processing method in order to show the most basic flavor characteristics of the producing region. One of Front Street Coffee's (FrontStreet Coffee) Colombian daily-drinker beans comes from the famous Huila region. The washed process fully reveals its original terroir, presenting a rich dark chocolate flavor with soft fruit acidity.

In addition to the more traditional chocolate-flavored Colombian coffee, Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) maintains a keen sense of smell for the current popular fourth wave of specialty coffee. More and more coffee lovers are not only paying attention to fruit-bomb-flavored coffee beans, but also beginning to gain a deeper understanding of coffee varieties and post-processing methods for green beans.

Among them, Colombian Hacienda El Paraiso coffee beans gained widespread attention because they were used by Luckin Coffee to launch its SOE series. As one of the well-known coffee estates in Colombia, Hacienda El Paraiso has long been found on Front Street Coffee's (FrontStreet Coffee) bean shelves.

Hacienda El Paraiso is located in the Cauca region, which is a coffee-producing region certified as a Colombian origin, with an average altitude of more than 1,700 meters and a maximum of 2,100 meters. Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) has many coffee bean origins and rich varieties, and the reason Front Street values this region is that the temperature difference between day and night here is much greater than in other regions, and the coffee cherries need longer to grow. After absorbing more soil nutrients, this creates the more outstanding sweet-and-acidic performance of Cauca coffee.

The owner of Hacienda El Paraiso, Diego Samuel, once studied coffee-related knowledge during university. In 2008, he began taking over this estate, which is brushed by sea breezes and carefully manages this unique piece of land. In 2015, Hacienda El Paraiso won first place in a local coffee cupping competition, which further stimulated the owner's enthusiasm for coffee cultivation and technological innovation.

With firm conviction, Diego led Hacienda El Paraiso to win awards many times, making the name Hacienda El Paraiso appear again and again on competition podiums, and the estate thus became widely known. On the road to improving and stabilizing coffee bean quality, Diego continuously carried out improvements and innovations. At present, Hacienda El Paraiso grows coffee varieties such as Bourbon, Laurina, Geisha, and Castillo, and is still planning to try more different varieties.

One Hacienda El Paraiso coffee bean obtained by Front Street is called Sakura, belongs to the Castillo variety, and uses a double anaerobic washed processing method. The whole coffee cherry first undergoes one anaerobic fermentation, then the skin and pulp are removed, and with the sticky mucilage layer still attached, it undergoes a second anaerobic fermentation. After fermentation ends, it is washed to thoroughly clean off the mucilage layer, and then it is sun-dried.

Front Street Colombian Hacienda El Paraiso Sakura Coffee Beans

Region: Cauca, Colombia

Estate: Hacienda El Paraiso

Altitude: 2,050 meters

Variety: Castillo

Processing method: Double anaerobic washed process

After cupping this Colombian Sakura coffee bean, Front Street found that through the above processing method, the coffee's flavor is fuller, with a rich fruity sweetness and fermented quality, and a heavier mouthfeel. In order to highlight this coffee bean's unique sweetness and give it a heavier mouthfeel, Front Street Coffee's (FrontStreet Coffee) roaster adopted a medium roast level when developing the roasting curve.

When brewing this coffee bean, Front Street recommends using the following parameters:

Dripper: Hario V60

Water temperature: 90°C

Dose: 15 grams

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15

Grind size: 80% passing through a Chinese standard No. 20 sieve

The coffee beans shipped by Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) are all freshly roasted within 5 days. After roasting is completed, the coffee beans contain sufficient carbon dioxide gas, which during brewing will hinder hot water from entering the internal structure and affect the extraction of flavor substances. Therefore, Front Street recommends blooming during brewing to help the gas escape. The blooming time is generally controlled at about 30 seconds, and the specific adjustment should be based on the state of the blooming "hamburger"—if the "hamburger" does not visibly puff up or appears to collapse, the blooming time can be appropriately shortened; vice versa.

First pour 30 grams of hot water and bloom for 30 seconds, then pour from the center point in a thin stream and slowly circle to 125 grams. When the water level in the dripper drops to the point where the coffee bed is about to be exposed, continue pouring in circles to 225 grams. The extraction time is about 2 minutes.

The Sakura coffee produced by Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) using the above extraction recommendations has aromas of basil and rosemary on the palate, with a hint of strawberry jam in the aftertaste.

Some friends are curious why Front Street's coffee bean is called Sakura but does not have a sakura flavor. This is because when the owner of Hacienda El Paraiso named this coffee bean, he smelled a faint aroma, and this aroma reminded him of sakura. However, coffee is ultimately presented to consumers in the form of roasted beans. After careful roasting by Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee), the aroma of the coffee beans shows a different expression, which is why there are special spice aromas such as basil and rosemary.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.