A Modern Times Coffee Collaboration: From Colombia to your Cup

A Modern Times Coffee Collaboration: From Colombia to your Cup

Ingredients, Partners

We teamed up with our fellow coffee loving friends at Modern Times to bring you a very special bag of beans. Besides being barrel-aged in a Pure Project barrel that recently held Legend of the Lost Voyage, an arctic ale, the beans themselves have a pretty cool story. These Colombia Heriberto beans are sourced directly from Maya Family Farms in Salgar. Modern Times’ Coffee Program Manager, Tessie, shared with us her story of connecting with this farm:

We first met Daniela Maya and her family in 2018 when they visited our brewery in San Diego to cup coffees from their farms with us. Immediately we were drawn to the coffees: they exhibited a variety of flavors from fruit to chocolate, each one expressive in its own way, as well as highlighting the types of flavor profiles we tend to see from the Antioquia coffee growing region. It didn’t take long for us to start bringing in their coffees, and from then on we have consistently sourced from their farms for a wide variety of projects.

In February of 2019 I spent a week with Daniela Maya, Emilio Cervantes (director of business development), the Maya family , and a few other roasters in Salgar, a small town with a population of 18,000, about 3 hours outside Medellin. What an amazing experience it was – we spent a lot of time at their nursery, touring the farms and the wet mills where they process their coffee cherries, as well as the dry mill that is in the center of the town.

The Maya family has been involved in coffee growing and production for five generations, and currently 3 of those generations are operating and managing Accresco. It started as one farm and a couple of thousand trees to six farms, a nursery, and added on to a focus of specialty coffee and foreign trade. This part of the company is what Daniela Maya focuses on, and she’s the one who we have the closest, most direct relationship with. She has brought unique coffee processing methods to the business and has showcased a wide variety of types of coffees for the specialty market. Fun fact: Accresco’s foreign business anniversary is officially the first day they hand delivered the first bags of coffee to us at Modern Times (Nov 2, 2018). 

Each of the coffee lots that Daniela uses is named after a member of her family. These coffees are exceptional in quality, and go through specialized processing which Daniela designs to showcase the characteristics of each varietal and farm terroir. Heriberto, which is one of the lots that we have procured many times (we just love it!) is grown on the La Bagatela farm which is between 1600 and 1750 meters above sea level. It is a Castillo varietal, picked manually and goes through a traditional washing process, 16 hours of parchment fermentation, and then silo dried with controlled airflow. This coffee displays a chocolate and mature fruit profile, clean, with a citrus acidity, a vanilla aftertaste, is smooth, balanced and consistent.

Back here in San Diego, we aged these beans in a Weller bourbon barrel that recently held our Cellar Cyndicate exclusive LEGEND OF THE LOST VOYAGE—an arctic ale aged in a Portuguese tawny port barrel, then a Weller bourbon barrel. Postroast, prepare yourself to get lost on a voyage through waves of dark caramel, toffee, amaretto, and brown sugar.

Be sure to secure a bag of these LOST VOYAGE BARREL-AGED COLOMBIA HERIBERTO beans while you can!

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Tagged with: partners, ingredients, Coffee