X-Stendo Clip / Extended Fermentation Natural X-Variable Microlot

X-VARIABLE MICROLOT | Lot FR005 | 8 oz / 227 g

The X-Stendo Clip. A super extended fermentation from the Café Solo Collective community. A Supremo. A family harvest.

This drop is a celebration of our 1 year anniversary.

We got a chance to try this coffee during the last Barista Exchange trip to Colombia, and it stood out on the table. It was Felipe's favorite coffee.

Coffee fermentation is not new to Africa. It's not new to African peoples. It's not new to indigenous peoples. It's not new to our lineage, our heritage. In fact, coffee has always been a fermented food.

Extended fermentation is often credited as an innovation in the market. One of the things we learned during the Barista Exchange from Beamlak was that the Gurage people found out 500 years ago that they preferred the taste of it, innovated it, and were punished at export for it as a defect. Now the market has adopted what the origin already knew, 500 years late, and we're still missing the point.

Indigenous communities have always fermented. Fermentation is an indigenous practice. Fermentation is an African practice. We're proud to bring a coffee that honors those roots. Our people have been fermenting. The industry just finally caught up.

The point isn't that we shouldn't celebrate innovation. It's that too often, because of our own preferences, lack of curiosity and blinders, aka too much sugar and cream, we miss out on the innovation and the innovators of it. We block our own opportunities for joy.

This coffee is in honor and celebration of that.

It comes from one of the Café Solo Collective community projects we were able to meet. It's outside of our usual project, but we definitely wanted to share it. Big shout out to them.

Producer: Andrés Chacón, Finca La Chapola
Origin: Vereda Monterredondo, El Tambo, Cauca, Colombia, 1,650 MASL
Grade: Supremo
Process: Natural, super extended fermentation. 260 hours (11 days) in metal barrels with a selected mosto, under controlled temperature and pressure, working with the farm's own native microbes.
Drying: 36 hours in the sun, then about 85 hours in a dehumidifier, raised slowly from 30°C to 40°C.
Roast: Light

We taste: Purple wild berry. Chocolate chip. Fig. Blueberry.

Very fermented. Play with long ratios, like 1:19. That's a starting point, not a rule.

Limited. When it's gone, it's gone.

Roasted at Cxffeeblack, 3386 Bowen Avenue, Memphis TN 38122.