Coffee of the Month: Tropical Co-Ferment

Every subscription box this month is running the same coffee: Tropical, a natural co-ferment from Rodrigo Sanchez's farm in Huila, Colombia. Here's why we picked it, and what's actually happening inside the bag.

The farm

Tropical comes from Finca Monteblanco, up at 1,750 meters in San Adolfo, Acevedo — one of the higher, cooler pockets of Huila, which gives the cherries more time to develop before harvest. The variety is Purple Caturra, picked between April and May this year. Rodrigo has been refining this specific lot for a few harvests now, and this is the best version of it we've tasted.

The process

This isn't a natural process in the usual sense — it's a co-ferment, and the difference is deliberate. Before the coffee cherries are even involved, Rodrigo builds a "mother culture": a mix of live bacteria and yeast grown over eight days with tropical fruit — pineapple, cholupa, gulupa, passionfruit — and natural sugars, tracked closely for pH and sugar content the whole time.

Once that culture is ready, the ripest, floated cherries get sealed in with it for a second fermentation — 150 hours, tightly controlled. That's where the fruit character actually gets built into the coffee, while the culture keeps the acidity from swinging out of balance the way an uncontrolled natural process sometimes does. After that, it's dried slowly on parabolic dryers and raised beds to lock the aromatics in before they have a chance to fade.

What it tastes like

Daiquiri. Red Kool-Aid. Passionfruit. This is not a subtle coffee — it's one of the more purely fun cups we roast, and it's exactly why we wanted it in subscriptions this month instead of saving it for a smaller release. Coffee this expressive is easier to actually enjoy than to describe.

How to brew it

Pour over: 15g coffee to 250g water, 205°F, poured in 30g pulses and letting each one draw down before the next. Total brew time 3:00–3:30. Nothing unusual here — the coffee's already doing the interesting part. Your job is just not to get in its way.

Or don't brew it hot at all

If you want to see this coffee do something different, it's also the base of our Monteblanco Spritz — coffee concentrate, orange juice, simple syrup, a dash of Angostura bitters, topped with soda water over ice. The OJ and bitters pull the passionfruit and red-fruit notes forward in a way a straight pour-over won't. Full recipe is on the card in this month's box.

Tropical's available now — in subscriptions shipping this month, and in bags at all four shops while it lasts.