Colombia Finca El Vergel Bourbon Sidra Koji CM（100g/pack）

A World’s first koji benchmarking tasting set.

ABOUT KOJI PROCESSING

This quite new process looks in practice a lot like a traditional natural processed coffee produced by El Vergel. Koji, a fungus that grows on rice, has a long tradition in food production but next to none in coffee processing. This open-source fermentation method is dependant on temperature primarily, keeping the cherries between 25-30 degrees when sitting on the drying beds is critical. The idea of the fermentation with koji is that it breaks down polysaccharides and pectin as well as produce amino acids. This is done so by inoculating the whole cherries within a shallow vessel for 36 hours. This looks very much like a pre-fermentation on a natural processed coffee, and from there the cherries are sent off to the drying beds. Little is now known about the impact of this fermentation method, but it’s safe to say that much more will be written on Koji processed coffees. For a more in-depth read on Koji fermentation, and on how to do it yourself, reference Christopher’s blog, who is an amazing writer and storyteller.

Sidra info:
This coffee was processed with a Koji Fermentation, which is made by adding spores of a Fungus A- Oryzae, which helps us obtain certain sugars that are not available during a normal fermentation due to the non-ability of the natural micro-organisms to breakdown the sugars.
For this specific lot, we made a 24 hours of prefermentarion in cherry followed by 36 hours fermentation with Koji Spores in thin layers in rised shaded beds, with a temperature ranging from 22 celisus degrees up to 31, followed by a 22 day drying shaded process in rised beds with one stall at 20% moisture for 5 days, controlling the temperature to be below 32 celsius degrees, which guarantees an optimum drying and also improves the process the Koji is making itself, finally, coffee was stabilized in cherry for 30 days in hermetic bags.

/Behind the story/

This amazing farm is located in Fresno, a small town and municipality in the wonderful region of Tolima, around 6 hours driving from Medellin. Owned by Bayter family, Elias & Shady Bayter and their lovely mom, Marta. Elias and Shady have been involved in farming since childhood and following their parents who were growing avocado and conventional coffee. In 2010 they ventured into producing fine premium cocoa and specialty coffee. Few years later, after several researches of new coffee varietals, the Bayter brothers kickstarter a varietal project at Finca Vergel. Since then, Elias and Shady have been experimenting with new and innovative techniques and produce a large diversity of coffee varietals that helps many baristas to reach semi-finals and finals in world coffee competition.

/Bourbon Sidra Exclusive Edition/

This beautiful varietal of Bourbon Sidra is a Koji carbonic maceration natural special process exclusive for us, PAGA. Koji is well known as a “magic” culinary ingredient, inspired from Japan, such as sake. This innovative technique with Koji has never been used before in fermentation with coffee, and has had incredible success and revolutionized the quality of the coffee. Elias has crafted different recipes with different fermentation and stages of drying that use a specific temperature and duration. The entire process happens in two phases and the idea of fermenting with Koji, is that it breaks down the polysaccharide and pectin as well as producing amino-acids. First are sorting the coffee cherries by color and size. and after that, we moved the cherries in tanks so the coffee cherries got inoculated with Koji and submerged in carbonic maceration for only 36 hours to achieve the desired PH level. Then the coffee cherries are moved to dried beds and spread Koji over the cherries and dried for 18 days. Finally, taken to the final moisture level mechanically to secure optimum moisture to be taken to another 45 days of stabilization in grain pro bags.