“Café de Altura was established in 2004,” Esteban says. “It started with the breakup of a cooperative, which prompted some of its member producers to buy a company together. Café de Altura is very unique in that more than 570 small-scale producers jointly own the company. They are all Costa Ricans. None of them are from abroad. 20% of all our coffees come from the producers who own a stake in the company. Aside from that, we buy coffee from over 3,500 small-scale farmers. We also process and export it ourselves”.
Nowadays, anaerobic fermentation is a near-standard process when making specialty coffee. It’s a method of fermenting green coffee. As the name suggests, beans are fermented without oxygen. During washed processing, coffee cherries are depulped, washed with water and stripped of mucilage through fermentation. In many cases, these steps are done outdoors in fermentation tanks. In anaerobic fermentation, meanwhile, coffee cherries go through the same steps but in tightly closed tubs or tanks with no oxygen. This airtight environment activates microbes that are otherwise dormant, lending unique flavors to coffee. The sealed-up containers also minimize the impact of external factors on coffee. This, combined with a temperature-controlling device inside the fermentation tank, helps achieve consistent quality. Do you know when anaerobic fermentation started and how? It wasn’t a product of research and development by intellectuals at a laboratory somewhere. But it all started with a young man’s curiosity.
