Costa Rica Aquiares Lactic Fermentation

COLLABORATION
This coffee become a celibration of our long-term partnership with Eight Ounce Coffee - a leading distributor of specialty coffee equipment in Canada, founded in 2011. 

THE FARM
The name Aquiares means “land between rivers” in the Huetar indigenous language, and Aquiares Estate is commonly referred to as “Aquiares Coffee and Community.” It is the largest farm in Costa Rica and home to 1,800 people. Although the farm was founded in 1890, Alfonso Robelo is the man responsible for its transformation a century later.

FERMENTATION
Last year Alfonso identified an opportunity to ferment coffee using different types of inoculates, or cultures that are also used in other food products. A friend gifted them a tiny amount of Kefir in May 2022, which they started to reproduce by feeding it sugar and holding in a water agar. To process this coffee, they drain out the liquid from this agar and inoculate our small fermentations tanks at 5% v/v with full cherry. The coffee was fermented for three days, or until pH would drop under 4. Cherries were then sun-dried for 16 days, and finished drying in Guardiola for 1 extra day.

PROCESSING
F1 hybrid varieties are created by crossing genetically distinct parents (in this case, the Ethiopian Rume Sudan x Sarchimor). The offspring of the cross are first-generation (F1) hybrids. F1 hybrids are notable because they tend to have significantly higher production than non-hybrids while maintaining high cup quality and disease resistance.