EXP026: HOPS

Edwin started with freshly picked coffee cherries, hand-sorted for ripeness and washed clean. He packed them into large 2,000kg tanks and let them ferment for 24 hours with almost no oxygen. During this time, the fruit gets softer and sweeter, and releases a thick, sugary liquid called mossto (or "must").

Once that first fermentation was done, he separated the cherries from the must. The cherries went into smaller 200kg tanks. The must was fermented on its own with brewer's yeast and a generous amount of cascade hops, the same hops used in some IPA-style beers, to add flavor. That hop-infused must was then mixed back into the cherries (about 30mL per kilogram), and the whole thing was sealed up to ferment again for another 72 hours.

After the second fermentation, the cherries were lightly depulped, leaving most of the sticky fruit layer (mucilage) still on the seed, similar to what's called a "black honey" process in Costa Rica. The seeds went straight into Edwin's greenhouse to dry on raised screen beds for 10 days. After drying, the coffee rested in a warehouse for 8 days to let moisture stabilize, then was packed into GrainPro bags and cupped repeatedly over the following weeks to check quality.