About Kibingo Washing Station, Victor Calderon, Daisy and Freddy Acevedo of

This product aggregates the entire 3 part, Rare drop, Amburana series from Bold Bean. This is the Producer info for each of the 3 producers.

Coffee 1:
Kibingo washing station is located in Kayanza community in northern Burundi. The
station itself sits 1.893 meters above sea level. The altitude of the farms on the
neighboring hills that supply the washing station varies from 1,700 to 1,900 meters
above sea level.
Kibingo serves 3,515 registered coffee growers who are spread over 18 hills in the
area. This station is equipped with 10 fermentation tanks, 2 soaking tanks and a
drying field with 165 drying tables and 4 pre-drying tables. Kibingo can process
750,000 kg of cherry per day.
The washing station participates in a number of farmer outreach and support
projects including a livestock rearing project and a range of Farmer Hub projects
centered on strengthening cooperatives and improving yields.

Coffee 2:
La Pia is a long-running coffee of ours. We've been purchasing this coffee for 6 or 7 years now. The coffee comes from a guy named Victor Calderon. The farm is situated just outside of the town of Palencia in the Fraijanes region of Guatemala about an hour outside of Guatemala City. Don Victor practices bio-dynamic farming on his farm, working with the environment on and surrounding his farm to maintain a functioning ecosystem, of which coffee is just a part. As a result Finca la Pia more closely resembles a forest than a coffee farm. In many areas of the farm, lots of coffee are planted as an understory shrub under old-growth and secondary-growth forests.

The first time I walked the farm with Don Victor he told me about an unusual method he developed to control coffee rust (a coffee plant disease they kills the plant’s leaves and ultimately, if not treated with chemicals, the plant itself). The story goes; He was driving the dirt roads through his farm and noticed that all of the shrubs along the road did not have any rust (coffee rust is present in some percentage on every farm in Latin America). He started thinking on why this could be and came up with the theory that the dust and mud from the roads that was caked on the plants prevented the coffee rust spores from attaching on the plants.

In his bio-dynamic farming approach and quest to maintain a healthy ecosystem on his farm Victor prefers not to spray chemicals to treat rust unless absolutely necessary and instead works with the environment to prevent the occurrence of rust as much as possible.

He thought if he could that his plants with a solution of clay and water he could drastically reduce the occurrence of coffee rust on his farm and do so without the use of chemicals. So, he filled up pump sprayers, the kind used to spray fertilizer or other agrochemicals, and sprayed the coffee plants on his farm with this clay and water solution. And it worked. The plants that were treated with the solution had a drastic reduction in coffee rust.

Don Victor has also hypothesized that the clay solution on the leaves mimics shade coverage as it allows a bit less sunlight to reach the level and developing coffee cherries. He claims that this allows the plants, which are already planted under shade, to develop even slower which increases the concentrations of sugars, acids and proteins in the coffee, resulting in a more complex, tastier coffee.

Coffee 3:
Located near Filandia, Quindio, El Encanto is a new farm owned by Daisy and Freddy Acevedo. Daisy comes from a coffee producing family in the neighboring department of Risaralda but it was only recently that the Acevedo's got into coffee. Before purchasing their farm they were working, Daisy as a biologist and Freddy as an engineer, and living in Panama. They saw in Panama that, if done right, coffee farming could be a fulfilling and profitable business. So, they returned to Colombia and bought the farm.

El Encanto sits at 1800m above sea level, boarding a natural preserve in a verdant valley. On the farm, the Acevedo’s are focusing on the production of heirloom coffee varietals and highlighting varietal characteristics and terroir through careful processing with their on-site wet-mill and drying greenhouses.

Daisy’s background as a biologist drives her focus on ensuring coffee is part of a sustainable eco-system on the farm and Freddy was able to apply his engineering background to the design of the home, the on-site wet-mill and the yet to be finished (as of our visit with them earlier this year), cupping lab and offices.

This lot is a fully-washed, Gesha varietal grown from seed stock which Daisy and Freddy originally brought from Panamá to plant on Daisy’s father, Gustavo’s, farm. The cup is sweet, clean and elegantly nuanced with intricate notes of honeysuckle, tamarind, lime leaf, lemongrass and melon.

We source this coffee with our friends and partners La Real Expedición Botánica (LaREB).

LaREB is a Colombian collective lead by coffee producers, focused on bringing their coffees to specialty roasters in the USA and Europe. These roasters value coffee as something more than a commodify and are willing to pay fair prices that are tied to cost of production and quality rather than the ever-fluctuating stock market.

The work of the collective is centered in interdisciplinary actions: coffee studies, research, nationwide reach and, above all, transparent work between all team members. LaREB looks to restore and reproduce traditional coffee cultivars and the agroforestry models that resisted the homogeny of the Green Revolution. Their goal is to redesign coffee production in each regional project with a focus on quality. Thus, expanding the boundaries of what specialty coffee can be through specialized farms, which serve as experimental centers of learning and dissemination of post-harvest practices and processes.

Bold Bean serves as the North American importer for LaREB.