Finca el Porvenir

Finca el Porvenir sits at 1,950 metres in Palestina, in the south of Huila, and is run by Sandra Milena Mora and her husband Hector Coy. The farm is planted mainly to Caturra and Tabi, and the couple do their own picking, pulping, fermentation and drying on site rather than selling cherry on. Quo have worked with them for a decade, visiting the farm over the years, which is the sort of relationship that lets a roaster buy the same lot again as the crop changes.

This lot is the Caturra, processed washed. Caturra is a natural dwarf mutation of Bourbon that came out of Brazil and is now one of the most widely planted varieties in Colombia. It rewards altitude: at close to 2,000 metres the cherry ripens slowly and the sugars build, which is where the caramel body in this cup comes from.

About Quo Coffee

Quo is a small roastery in Skärhamn on Tjörn, north of Gothenburg, started by a group of colleagues who had worked together elsewhere in Swedish coffee. They buy on long relationships rather than spot lots, work with several producers they have known for over a decade, and pay attention to the carbon cost of getting coffee to Sweden. They were among the first roasters to join Belco’s sail freight programme.

Brewing it

Washed Colombian Caturra is more forgiving than a Kenyan or an Ethiopian, which makes it a good everyday filter coffee and a reasonable place to start if you are dialling in a new brewer. A flat-bottom dripper with a wave paper such as the xBloom 155 mm flat-bottom filters keeps the bed level and the extraction even. Try 15 g to 250 g of water at 93 °C, medium grind, total time around 3:00. It holds up well as it cools, so it is worth drinking from something that shows the colour, like the Loveramics Hutch tasting cup. Four to seven days off roast is a good window.

Coffee details