This coffee's story

5 years ago, Nestor Lasso and his brother Adrian took over the family farm and branched out into specialty coffee and experimentation rather than growing coffee like their parents.

Today, at 22 and 24, the two brothers have teamed up with Jhoan Vergara, also the child of a coffee farmer, to create El Diviso. El Diviso brings together the two-family farms, El Diviso (Nestor and Adrian Lasso) and Las Flores (Jhoan Vergara), close to the town of Pitalito, in the Huila region of Colombia. This partnership was great as these 3 young guys united their knowledge to improve quality.

Then, 3 years ago, Cat & Pierre, founders of CATA Export and the 3 producers started a journey of trial and error to define the fermentation processes and protocols at the farm, with the aim to link these coffees directly to the UK market. This learning process has been time and money consuming but with an exciting outcome as today these coffees have been used in many barista competitions across Europe. Recently winning 1st place at Brewers Cup in Ireland and 3rd in Austria.
Today Cata Export and Finca El Diviso work as one team, the reason why Cat is not alone in this trip to the UK but with Nestor to finally meet all the roasteries who have been behind this process too.

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Nestor’s and Cat’s friendship is a good example of what Cata Export do, working directly from the farms is a very enriching process for them not only for the complexity of topics such as agronomy but also for the relationships Cata builds which ultimately translate into an economic benefit for Cata’s community, in this way many more young producers like Nestor have stayed in coffee and have had the chance to build a career.

Processing

step 1. the natural chiroso caturra process begins with a harvest at optimum maturity with a few brix degrees that oscillate between 24 and 26 degrees. the cherry is processed to be chosen to separate bright and defective beans. the coffee is introduced into plastic tanks to make an oxidation (48 hours). in this process, the leachate that the plant throws is recirculated mass until completing the cycle, measuring degrees brix and ph (4.5).

step 2. continue with a rafting (to separate vain grains and impurities) and with this lower the dough temperature. a thermal shock is carried out at a temperature of 50 °c, and it is introduced into sealed plastic bins to start anaerobic fermentation. during anaerobic fermentation, saccharomyces yeast was added — cerevisiae strain type t58 — being used for the improvement of profiles in the brewing industry. the proportion used was 1:5 (1 gram x 5 kilos of cherry) in active dilution at 35°c. the solution was added to the cherry by spraying and left in conditioning and multiplication stage for 80 hours.

step 3. after this process, the cherries are mechanically dried to dehydrate as much water as possible (approximately 12 hours), and then dried under the sun (approximately 15 days). culminating these processes, we review physical quality and sensory.