Red Honey // Hibiscus Co-Ferment Pacamara X-Variable Microlot

X-VARIABLE MICROLOT | Lot FR004 | 8 oz / 227 g

Colombian coffee fermented in hibiscus tea.

This is Mario's favorite coffee from the harvest this year, and it might just be the blackest coffee I've ever heard of or tasted.

Limited edition. Our new X-Variable. Only 20 kilos here. It's part of our celebration for one year in the new building.

THE PROCESS COFFEE FORGOT

The coffee industry moves in trends and novelty. Somewhere along the way, it lost honey processing. It's still worth being curious about.

Here's what red honey means. After the cherry goes through the depulper, the farmer leaves 50 to 90 percent of the sticky fruit on the seed. Then it dries slowly in the shade instead of direct sun. That slow, controlled fermentation pulls the fruit's sugars into the coffee.

The Dulcey family in El Tambo, Colombia, did that. Then they fermented it in hibiscus.

Black people in Colombia doing a red honey process and fermenting it in hibiscus. That's the blackest thing you could ferment a coffee in.

This isn't the most specialty coffee in the world. It's uniquely itself. It tastes like some Black people were doing what they wanted to do with it, expressing the way God made them. When you drink it, you get to celebrate them, the way they processed it, and all the things God has done.

Origin: El Tambo, Cauca, Colombia
Producer: The Dulcey family
Process: Red honey, hibiscus co-ferment
Varietal: Pacamara
Roast: Light

We taste: Cacao and dark chocolate up front. A dragon fruit and rhubarb finish. Fresh off the brew it smelled like Kool-Aid.

Let it cool. Trust me. When it's cool enough, it opens up even more. It pairs really great with savory food. I was eating it with breakfast and it almost came across like a wine.

How we brewed it: 26.5 grams of coffee, 1:14, flat bottom brewer. That's a starting point, not a rule. Play with it.

Come taste it on bar at the club, 3386 Bowen. When it's gone, it's gone.

Roasted at Cxffeeblack, 3386 Bowen Avenue, Memphis TN 38122.