Colombia Finca El Marchito 120 Hour Anaerobic Washed

Info

Purchased from: Captain's Coffee
Origin: La Palmera Village, Colombia
Farm: Finca El Marchito
Varietals: Columbia
Grade: Excelso
Purchase Date: 2025-02-14
Purchase Cost: $26.22
Purchase Gram: 1360g
Used Gram: 1360g
Remaining Stock: = default((this.file.frontmatter.purchase_gram - this.file.frontmatter.used_gram), "N/A")g
Last Roasted: 2025-06-11
Link to original listing: Link

Roasting Recommendations:

**Recommended Roast Range:** City+ to Full City+ (Light-medium to Medium-dark)

We like this coffee best at City + (Light-medium) or as first crack has begun to trail off. We find this “lighter side of medium” roast level really showcases the florals and citrus in the cup. If you prefer a more balanced cup, feel free to take this coffee to a full medium, or just after first crack has trailed off. Pushing the roast into the first few snaps of second crack will yield a more chocolate focused cup at the expense of the more subtle floral notes, but the cup will pick up a bit more body and creamy texture.

Coffee Description

You may have had plenty of Colombian coffee, but have you ever tasted the actual Colombia cultivar? Odds are you have and didn’t know it, though almost certainly as a part of a variety blend. Its lineage can be traced back 4 or 5 generations ago when farmers where hoping to combine the high yield, disease resistant and tasty cup qualities of the Caturra variety with the nearly coffee leaf rust immune Timor variety. The result is a workhorse hybrid that despite sometimes being credited with saving the Colombian coffee industry during outbreaks of coffee rust leaf, often goes overlooked in the world of high end coffee. But at his farm El Marchito in the Indigenous Nasa Wesx community of Gaitania, producer Justiniano Paya decided it was high time the humble cultivar received recognition for also being capable of a world class cup.

So he sorted out his absolute best and most ripe Colombia cherries, gave them a whopping 120 hour anaerobic fermentation, then carefully washed and dried them in the shade. The result is a cup that I was convinced was a Bourbon or at the very least a Caturra. It’s bright yet soft like overripe citrus with notes of orange blossom, passion flower, tropical fruit and peach along with a white chocolate undertone. That might read as “intensely fruity and sweet” but the cup is so much more balanced than that. It’s sweet, certainly, but not juicy like a natural processed coffee. More like fruity sparkling water than orange soda. It’s refined. And the body is spectacular! Much more rich than it has any right to be. All topped off with a lovely creamy mouthfeel and every so slightly tangy finish. If you’ve never gotten a chance to try the Colombia variety, this lot is the best showcase I can imagine.

_Belco Coffee_ - "Finca El Marchito is the place of work and source of happiness of the Paya family, located in the village of La Palmera of the Nasa Wesx reservation of Gaitania Tolima, in a secluded place but with everything necessary to produce high quality coffee and great happiness to deliver the best of work to all who drink the coffee. The road to the farm is difficult, long and very different from what the well located farms are used to. There is no paved road and access is limited and restricted because it is indigenous community territory. However very welcome for people who want to know and share the ideas and dreams of our community members and customers, it is a place of peace and reflection for all who can visit it.”

_Justiniano Paya_ - ”I was born and grew up in the middle of the war with the FARC where I was orphaned. From a very young age I worked in coffee farms in Huila and Tolima and returned to the community a few years later where there was already a peace process to return and work with coffee. Since those years I have my farm and work to leave my children and grandchildren that inheritance of work and life. Since I was a child, my elders taught me how to work and I have been working with coffee all my life.”

Roast Batches

Jun 11 2025

Roast Details

Notes

• Roasted outdoors on the porch
  • Glad I did, had pretty heavy smoke starting around ~3 minutes in
• Got USB drivers working for Skywalker
  • CH340 USB Serial - Dropped a copy in my home dir on NAS
  • No luck still - Artisan keeps cycling roaster on and off
    • It cycles the preheat on and off & turns on the cooling fans?
• Started messing a bit with heater strength & fan speed slightly to slow roast down a bit
  • Started fan at 20 & slowly moved it up to ~30

Jun 01 2025

Roast Details

Notes

• First batch with Skywalker roaster!
• Weighed out remaining - 868 gram left, so half of that would be 434
  • Was planning on 400g batch, but that would leave ~70 grams left at the end, so might as well split evenly
• This batch was quite a bit more smokey than the popcorn popper batches
  • Though we ended with ~15% moisture loss, so right into a medium roast
• For ease of first roast, I maintained temp / fan / etc throughout roast
• Had trouble with Artisan. Set temp to 400, but around 330 - Artisan cycles the heating off
  • Tried twice & couldn't figure it out so just went ahead roasting manually using roaster controller instead
• Skywalker cooling fan seems good though - beans were cooled in a pretty quick amount of time

May 17 2025

Roast Details

Notes

• Popcorn popper batch
• Smaller strainer for cooling - total time from start to cool ~ 7 min

May 04 2025

Roast Details

Notes

• Testing out little fan for help with cooling beans faster
• Using fan, total process from coffee start to cool is ~ 5 minutes

Apr 05 2025

Roast Details

Notes

• Experimenting with smaller batch to see if I can reduce beans lost during heating
• Lost only one bean at the start & was able to quickly throw it back in
• Rest stayed in the popcorn popper
  • Lower batch + tilting the machine back helps
  • I've been "stirring" by rocking the machine side to side and that seems to give a fairly even roast
• So first time I can really measure moisture loss too - which was ~12.5%, which is more or less squarely within light roast range!
• Doing two batches today
  • 13.3% moisture loss on second round

Mar 14 2025

Roast Details

Notes

• This batch was a mess
• Forgot to start timer, dropped a lot of beans going in, lost a lot during roast
• Still turned out okay - so just need to wait to test it tomorrow
• Didn't loose any beans during cooling though! But did have to remove two very under roasted beans

Feb 23 2025

Roast Details

Notes

• Found a West Bend Air Crazy popcorn popper at Goodwill for ~$5
  • It's a newer version that unfortunately removed the side vents & only has bottom airflow
• Since roaster is bottom air flow only, required constant stirring
  • I may have charred a wooden utensil 😅
• Roast was far too quick with FC around 2 min
• Lost a few greens because of high / central bottom airflow, which popped out some of the smaller, lighter beans
  • Also lost a few during cooling too because I'm bad at this
• Ate one roasted bean after cooling, and it tasted quite grassy and vegetal
• Rested overnight
• French press in the morning - and I'm honestly quite pleasantly surprised
  • Fairly light/medium roast, good flavor
  • Little bit of grassy notes, but not too bad
  • Overall not a lot of flavor development though
  • VERY drinkable compared to last pan roast of the Ethiopia Sidamo Natural Shantawene
  • First thought after finishing roast last night was, this popcorn popper was a waste.. Now, I'm having second thoughts - I might be able to use this thing to get by until I get my roaster 🤔