Meet this summer's cold brew - Pitaya, Colombia
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When it came to selecting a bean for this summer’s cold brew, we knew that we wanted something extra special. Something fruity, refreshing, and that really spoke to the season.
Enter this year’s lot of Pitaya, vibrant, complex, and so clean and juicy I’m pretty sure it counts as one of your five a-day. Big continental minibreak vibes. Backstreet raspberry gelato, fresh nectarine juice, a restorative lemongrass tea from the hotel breakfast buffet after one too many Aperols on the Piazza. Phenomenal as a cold brew but also brews an absolute dream on batch and V60. Pure Colombian Pink Bourbon perfection and one for you coffee purists.
Source.
The Pitaya and a future as-of-now top-secret launch come courtesy of our friend Laura. Laura and her partner William have been at the forefront of Colombian coffee for some time and in the last few years have set up Minga, a green sourcer and tight-knit team of four based at-origin in Huila.
By being based at origin and focusing just on the Huila region allows the Minga team to develop meaningful and long-standing connections with a network of exemplary producers. Some are old friends, some are family, some they’ve got to know through trusted word of mouth. These relationships are built on the mutual understanding of what really matters when it comes to producing exceptional coffee, placing equitability, sustainability and community above all else.
Minga, after all, takes its name from well... "minga", a traditional Colombian form of communal work or collective action and a term often used in indigenous and rural communities. The concept emphasises mutual aid, solidarity, and the strengthening of the community social unit. In other words, it’s a people living together, working together, building something greater together. Laura and her team place this ethos at the core of everything they do, creating a collective of individuals that come together to ensure that exceptional people receive a fair price and supportive environment to produce exceptional coffee. Thus, incapsulating every producer, community leader, cupper, lab analyst, truck driver, warehouse operative, dry mill worker, logistician, roaster, and coffee drinker (yes even you) in this minga.
Origin.
If you were to ask any coffee roaster what their favourite origin region was, I guarantee you wouldn’t have to wait long for Huila to crop up. Huila is part of the Colombia Massif, a UNSECO Biosphere that ticks box after box when it comes to coffee producing conditions. Altitude? Yup the Andes splits into two mountain ranges here offering consistent heights between 12000 and 2000 masl. Soil? Extremely rich and fertile thanks to impressive biodiversity and the region holding more than 70% of the country’s freshwater. Shade? Huila is notoriously cloudy and averages about 3.5 hours of sunlight per day, this encourages the accumulation of chemical precursors (lipid content and chlorogenic acids) which positively contribute to the coffee's flavour profile.
Nothing quite hits like a washed Huila Pink Bourbon and the Pitaya is an exceptional example of this varietal. Remarkably resistant to rust and consistently complex, Pink Bourbons have shot to prominence since its discovery in 2014 and is a firm favourite with us here at the roastery. Despite having a high harvest volume, the yield of Pink Bourbons is relatively low. This is in part due to the parchment density of the Pink Bourbon and the higher percentage of peaberries, many of which fall outside of speciality coffee screen sizes. This, and their routinely high cupping score contribute to its high price.