Java Koji Supernatural

This miraculous coffee is absolutely stunning!  The attention to detail that goes in the Java Koji Supernatural is out of this world!  There are so many steps prior to this coffee making it's way to your Cute friends here who roast it in small batches of 700 grams.  Yup, small batch for real!
 
Thank you to El Vergel for Blessing us with this coffee that shows your continued patience and eager desire to take coffee experimentation to another level! You make coffee fun and exciting to learn about.  Our palates are beyond pleased! 
 
The lovelies of  El Vergel are the first that we know of who are doing this Koji Coffee process.  You may be asking yourself right about now, what makes it Koji?  Well, let's start with what is Koji?  It is the fungus, Apergillus Oryzae that comes from steamed rice.  Koji is a centuries old process from the Japanese and Chinese cultures.  If you have had miso, soy sauce, or sake and enjoyed it, you have Koji to thank for your delightful experience.  When you taste this coffee, you can thank Koji again!  El Vergel drys and grounds it to be ready to be applied to the coffee beans.  They apply it and then let the coffee ferment anaerobically for a couple of hours. At that time a white layer should be seen on the top of the coffee beans. After that it is dried on African raised beds under the sun and stabilized in grain pro bags.  Then they ship it across the beautiful waters of the world in super cool little boxes! Yes, little boxes! This is a microlot coffee :)
 
BOOM! The taste is incredibly unique! Tropical fruit aromas, juicy pineapple taste, low acidity, light and lingering body.  We roast this coffee in super small batches of 700 grams per batch. We then place them in bio-film bags inside a beautiful gold lined copper tube! As you can see in the photos, it's pretty!
 
A little back story:  We met Martha Bayter and Santiago Carvajal at our roasting facility in Berkeley two years ago.  They had come from Colombia to share their coffees and to do what's called a coffee cupping at our facility.  It was for their company Forest Coffee and farm called El Vergel.  We missed the cupping, but we got a chance to meet, greet, and take home some samples from the cupping.  Before we could even open the bags we could smell super sweet aromas coming from each one.  Notes of tropical fruits, chocolates, caramel, guavas, bananas, melons, and berries filled the air.  We knew in that moment this was something special!  We immediately had to take a photograph with Martha and Santiago to hold the memory of this moment.  It felt MONUMENTAL!  The meeting was full of smiles and hearts were full of joy!  For a couple years now we have been buying coffee from Martha whose sons, Elias and Shady help run the operation and come up with the various wild coffees at El Vergel.  As we go through the Forest Coffee Offerings we find a lot of unique coffees with processes that push the envelope of coffee.  Pushing into Koji with the help of Kaapo Paavolainen, El Vergel has developed a fermentation technique using the Asperigillus Oryzae.  It is a natural process coffee, but it's SUPERNATURAL!   Let us take your spirit high on a journey through your cup of coffee :)
 
Country : Colombia
Region : Tolima
Variety : Java
Process : Koji Supernatural
Altitude: 1500 MT
Producer : El Vergel ~ Martha, Elias, and Shady Bayter
Palate & Sensory Notes: Tropical fruit aromas, juicy pineapple taste, toffee, caramel, umami, low acidity, light and lingering body.  

Shout out to Santiago and their cousin Pablo who are others we know at Forest Coffee that help keep the Forest Coffee family rolling with goodness!
 
Photography: Marysabel Gainza
Production, Set Design, & Hair: SabreeN NaimaH & Madge McCulloch
Make Up & Styling: SabreeN NaimaH
Model: BiankA AlloyN
Art Direction & Concept: Cute Coffee
 
Photos of Coffee from Forest Coffee