Santiago Arango is a modern example of a younger producer changing the narrative of specialty coffee growing in Colombia. Suddenly finding himself in charge of two large coffee farms after his father's sudden passing, Santiago has since taken La Herencia to new heights. His Advanced Natural Ombligon was an easy buy for us on story and taste. By taking a shortened double-fermentation approach more commonly found in washed coffee lots than in naturals, he is able to create the classic tropical, fruit punch Ombligon sensation outside of Huila.
This cup is incredibly tart, sweet and juicy, like a berry lemonade. We found even more complexity in our cups after roasting, including a vibrant lime acidity, a refreshing body that reminds us of kiwi and watermelon, and the balancing anise finish that we love in this varietal.
This coffee launched on April 7th as part of Drop 7!
The last batch we're selling was roasted on July 5th.
La Herencia is based in Andes, Antioquia. Santiago took over the farm in his mid 30s after the sudden passing of his father a few years back. Prior to that, he had left coffee to build a life in Medellin, like many other young producers. He's now just 38, but since returning to his father's farm, he has found new meaning in building his family's coffee legacy, uplifted the quality, and entered into La Herencia into the specialty market. This lot is a great representation of his growing success after all his learnings, hardships, and newfound passion in the last few years.
This varietal is an exciting one that is growing in popularity partially due to the competition stage in the past years (an Ombligon took #3 and then #1 the following year at WBC). It is also increasingly becoming more and more available as producers have prioritized the varietal after seeing its success in local cupping competitions. Named after it's belly button shape, the varietal is a bit of a mystery discovery. It was only grown in Huila at first, but has since been planted in other regions in Colombia, like this one in Andes.
Handpicked and sorted with at least 95% of cherries at peak ripeness. Coffee is fermented twice in cherry. The first stage is 48 hours aerobic fermentation in open tanks. The second stage is 24 hours in closed tank anaerobic fermentation. Coffee is still in cherry and laid out to sun dry on raised beds for 3 to 4 weeks.
Every now and then, we find a coffee that we already know we are going to buy before the sample arrives in our hands. These decisions are made easy when our exporting partners are excited about the lot and we are already excited about the producer story. This project has always been about supporting young producers entering or, in this case, re-engaging with coffee and looking to do something different. Santiago has quickly caught up to other producers by emphasizing interesting single varietal cultivation and experimenting with fermentation practice. We hope to keep buying from Santiago wherever his interests take him.
Green cost: $18.08/kg ($5/kg airship)
Package and roasting costs: $2.91/bag; $10/kg
Profile and sample use: ~3.8kg
Approx. Margin: 34.66%
Resting: Wait 25 days for peak experience (degas the night before by opening bag for about an hour). We're impatient and think this has tasted high clarity as early as 20 days after roast too.
We've primarily enjoyed this offering as a pourover and iced pourover.
Temperature range: 194-196°F
Water: Tap/Demineralized and Third Wave Water Light Roast
Grind Settings: Fine Coarse (550-600µm)
Target Drawdown Time: 2:20-2:40
2 Pour Recipe (SSP MP Flat burrs):
1. Bloom with 100g medium-low agitation in circle motion.
2. Final pour, 100g lower spout high, low agitation. Start with slow circle, finish last 30-40g as a center pour.
This is our second natural purchase ever. And, when we bought this coffee, we knew it wouldn't be a candidate for "hot and fast" roasts. It's a wet coffee (high 11 percent moisture activity) and these belly-button shaped beans are almost as large as some pacamara. Early days in profiling, we saw plenty of tipping, even on much lower charges.
We settled on a much slower roast that'd we'd drop with much less dev time and a lower drop temp. 387°F and 25ish seconds of development time would normally have us classify this as an ultralight, but the length of the roast kept the interior color closer to what we've been calling Nordic.
Faster roasts of this coffee leaned savory and limeade. What we especially liked about this roast was a much sweet representation (we believe from the slower drying/maillard). We spend a good bit of time in this roast in that peak 18-22 RoR window. One big "unlock" in roasting this coffee was realizing we could adjust our between batch to a much lower bottom out temp for a lower charge. So instead of fixing our between batch to 360°F, like we do for every other coffee), we used a fixed -30°F of our target charge temp as the bottom out temperature before ramping up in our between batch. (DM us if this doesn't make sense or you want to hear more!) We found this minimized some tipping in the larger seeds.
We still observe some minor tipping and think we can learn a better airflow practice for naturals in the future. We acknowledge treating our naturals with the same airflow/environment temp probably contributes to mild pre-tipping later in the roast too. This coffee was such a great learning lesson for us and we are so pleased with the final cup profile.
Sensory Feedback
(Cupping) 1 day off of roast
Early profiles were: wild and ferment-y aroma, lime, koolaid, cherry, "red", licorice, and pineapple. Adjusted was sweeter, very "artificial" watermelon, melon and kiwi body, tropical-like (pineapple), fruit punch, and sour candy-like. Balanced by licorice. If you let it sit long enough (20 minutes), it tastes like craft chocolate with a fruitier profile.
(Cupping) 3 day off of roast
Same same same. So loud!
(QC Brew) 11 day off of roast
Melted fruity popsicle, fruit punch, licorice, watermelon!
(QC Soup) 18 days off of roast
Electric lime acid, watermelon, fruit punch!
(Brew) 25 days off of roast - 2 pour UFO, 196°F
Bop of a brew. This is candy watermelon juice, limeade, kiwi, fruit punch and a nice bitter note that balances, let's call it anise/licorice.
(Brew) 25 days off of roast - 4 pour Origami, 194°F
This is less for me. Extracts some extra bitter and some of the other qualities in this one I like less.
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