Colombia - El Vergel Geisha Clouds

Brothers Elias and Shady Bayter implement coffee development projects focused on empowering smallholder farmers in their home department, Tolima, with updated knowledge to diversify the flavor profiles their coffees can offer. This leads to an increase in their crops' quality and market value. They also proactively connect with international specialty coffee roasters to match their own and their partners' coffees with the appropriate consumers. Through these connections, they enable the two ends of the coffee value chain to get the fullest benefit.

Milton Monroy of Finca San Cayetano is one of Elias and Shady’s partners. His farm is reputed for its cultivation practices and is one of the most well-known in the San Juan de la China area. He started his coffee journey with his father and honed his coffee knowledge by working with common varieties like Caturra and Castillo for several years. They later heard of Geisha and, after cupping the variety for the first time, decided to dedicate 25% of their land to it. He considers this the best decision they have made and has not ceased in efforts to elevate the quality of the Geisha their farm produces. He has mastered this craft to the extent that they have made the ranks of COE in Colombia, and during the last Ibague Cafe Festival in November 2022, his Geisha micro-lot qualified him as one of the ten top producers in Tolima.

The Exporter

Forest Coffee is a platform established by Elias and Shady Bayter for their local farming communities to share best practices, and for their coffee to gain world recognition and better benefit from the international market. They celebrate the time-honored Colombian tradition of producing high-quality coffee by fusing legacy knowledge with innovative techniques.

Geisha is the storied variety acclaimed for its delicate complexity and clarity of fruit and floral flavors. For this reason, it is frequently showcased by coffee champions in their competition routines. To amplify its floral and fruit qualities, Milton and the Bayter brothers tailored the natural anaerobic processing method for this micro-lot.

The selectively handpicked cherries were placed in sealed tanks in batches of 60 KG, and fermentation was made to last for 84 hours. Their team followed strict protocol that included moving the cherries every 12 hours to encourage even fermentation.

The fine-tuned drying phase involved multiple stages. After draining the cherries for six hours, they were prudently passed through mechanical dryers —to evaporate the outermost layer of moisture and remove the risk of off-flavors. Then, the cherries were laid out on a specific raised bed for 24-32 days maximum, where the average temperature was optimal at 18° to 31°C.

This was followed by a five-day interval in a dark room before the final drying stage. In that final stage, the coffee was placed in a custom-built silo with a 125 KG capacity, which the Bayter brothers and Milton calculated would achieve the proper moisture level and preserve the prized virtues of their Geisha — pronounced florals in balance with a complex acidity and unobtrusive sweetness.