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... which made us wonder, "what if we shared this experience"?
This thought came after getting to try some high quality La Salsa gesha in the wild, but being bummed to find the roasters profile had some mild tipping, and, after tasting so much of it on our own roasting (LOL), it really was distracting to the experience.
So, for our final profile, we settled on a much slower "juicy" roast that'd we still drop with plenty 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. The weight loss (12%) was still pretty dang high in general but only a few decimals over starting moisture, which is why we feel comfortable still classifying it as nordic and not light.
So, we minimized tipping finally (for the most part) and it greatly improved our tasting experience. What was crazy limeade acidity with a harsh smoky, bitter astringency on the tail end of the taste profile, turned into a sweet and juicy watermelon candy bomb, but without the coferment, yeast or added sugar LOL. See below a comparison of the two curves. One brewing buddy on The Bean Archives discord, Justin (aka the Funkophile) called the tipped profile "more tropical", which we liked the thought behind. It definitely leans into a sharper and brighter flavor, more like pineapple than say mango. In general, this coffee has really wonderful fruit character on pourover and it's so interesting to see how it changes.
So, in some ways, maybe the tipping profile wasn't so bad. If the bitter linger on the tipping doesn't throw you off, than maybe we are too harsh as roasters to critique eachother having this defect. On the other hand, it's hard to ignore the common character it brings across multiple coffees and tasting it has definitely been a bit "glass shattering" -- it's hard to unsee.
In the profiles above, you can see the comparison on the tipped (blue) next tot he final (red). It wasn't too hard to get this coffee to tip. I just intentionally charged higher to start than I thought the coffee could handle and kept my turnaround gas adjustments quick (a shorter soak period). I was checking the tryer on the roaster pretty frequently and by about the 4 minute market, it was clear the pre-tipping had already begun by the small circles that were forming around the germination point. Later in the roast, before drop, they got darker than the rest of the external coffee seed quicker. Part of the problem with tipping is that the coffee seed will start to take in heat from that burst point and char at the spot. It's like a kernel shell that ruptured before it could properly burst into a popped corn.
Sensory Feedback
(Cupping) Nordic vs UL
Nordic: candy watermelon juice, limeade, kiwi, fruit punch and a nice sweet bitter note that balances it all, let's call it anise/licorice. Really juicy and sweet cup. Acid is toned down. The watermelon almost tastes artificial.
Tipped: Really bright limeade, leans vinegar-y, strong yellow and green acid amongst all the bright red fruit flavors. Less sweet and has some harshness in the finish that is slightly "gritty" in character. It's less "juicy" but the aroma is still great. Has the strong fruit punch vibes. Less fresh melon in character though.
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At Base Coat, we overshare everything. This page is dedicated to sharing our roasting insights and subsequent quality control so you can have the shared experience of (almost) everything that happened during the process of roasting this coffee -- but only if you care for it. Others just use this page as a fun way to see what references we found along the way before we finalized our bag notes. Some even just use this as a way to get to the product page or see brew and rest recommendations. We are very happy to support any of these use cases!
