The Colombian Coffee Company
The Colombian Coffee Co are based in London. They Roast out of their Arch in Flat Iron Square and showcase their wonderful coffee in the famous Borough market alongside the cafe inside the roastery.
These guys have a great story to run alongside the great coffee that they roast and sell, they’re also bloody lovely which always helps.
Colombia is home to a conflict that has lasted more than half a century but goes mostly unreported in the UK media.
As a result of the violence, many families and communities have to flee their homes and livelihoods at the drop of a hat and are forced to walk thousands of miles looking for somewhere they can settle.
Many arrive in the major cities, others migrate to coastal areas - but wherever they go they face the tremendous task of starting their lives from scratch.
4 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes. Some of these families come from coffee-growing backgrounds.
The Colombian Coffee Company was Co-founded by Eduardo Florez who grew up in Colombia where poverty had gripped his community and violence was a daily occurrence.
Gabriella Oakley lived and worked in Colombia and saw first hand the violence and issues that the country faced.
The pair launched The Colombian coffee Co to make a positive difference to these communities and give back to their country by selling its finest product: single-origin coffee.
Their focus is on not only drawing attention to the troubles that people are facing in Colombia but also raising awareness of the truly amazing coffee that is grown throughout the many finca’s of the country.
They use a wonderful analogy of;
“Good wine does not represent a country - wines would simply never be called ‘Spanish’ or ‘French’. Good wines focus on the variety of the grape (for example, Shiraz or Merlot) and the region it comes from.”
This is what they aim to promote in the coffee industry, particularly with Colombian coffee.
Colombia coffee is not a kind of coffee, it is only the origin. They love to talk about the special characteristics of the various varietals of coffee such as Typica, bourbon, geisha and Caturra.
The Coffee
The Typica from The Colombian Coffee Company is a variety of coffee beans with complex notes, bringing a pleasant honey and caramel aftertaste.
By natural mutation, this speciality coffee variety gave rise to most of the other coffee varieties. The Typica variety is one of the main four branches of the coffee family tree. At the end of the 1700s, the Dutch managed to steal a coffee plant from the Turks in the port of Mocha, Yemen, which they took first to Dutch colonies in Java and East Timor, and then to the Caribbean.
Typica's main characteristics are large beans and a low yield (the number of coffee cherries per branch). The plant can grow up to 5 meters high and its leaves are elliptical and elongated.
The flat side of the coffee beans is remarkably smooth and even, and the groove in the middle is bigger and deeper than any other variety. The slope of the groove, especially in larger beans, is straight and it has very noticeable edges. The angle of the primary branch with respect to the main trunk is around 67º.
Typica plantations are visually impressive as the fresh, new shoots of the plants have a unique golden colour.
This particular Typica originates from Vereda, El Libano which is in Tolima one of Colombia’s central Andean regions.
The coffee is produced by a farm owned by Omar Arango. This particular micro-lot is picked and partly processed to de-pulp the outer fruit of the coffee cherry.
The mucilage surrounding the coffee bean is then left on and left to dry, this is called honey processing. Some of the sweet outer layer is absorbed into the coffee bean resulting in a sweet sugary cup.
Photo : Mercanta
The Review
The Typica coffee from Colombian Coffee Company starts with a particularly sweet fragrance that bursts out the bag. The sugary sweetness reminded me of opening a bag of gummy bears.
The honey process becomes apparent when brewing the coffee when more aromas of sweet honey notes develop.
The coffee starts in a fairly delicate manner. No big bold boozy notes start at the front of the sip, but instead a pleasantly smooth coffee that has a medium mouthfeel and a muted acidity.
Once the coffee becomes slightly cooler the flavours start to emerge and dance out of the brew. A glimpse of juicy mandarine first that layers together with delicious notes of cinnamon.
The coffee has a delicious sweet undertone that sticks around throughout the whole brew and leaves an aftertaste that seems to quench the back of your palette.
For me this coffee worked really well as a cafetiere however because of the muted acidity it worked really well in more vigorous brew methods like a stovetop or espresso machine.
