Ecuador's arabica coffee production is just a fraction of that of neighboring Peru and Colombia, yet the baseline quality is exceptionally high. It’s a competitive environment in which many growers turn to processing innovations to stand out. On our last visit to Ecuador, blue plastic fermentation tanks fitted with airlocks were common, a sign that growers were tweaking the parameters of coffee’s fermentation to unlock unique flavors in the cup. 

Over the past few years, the Fundochamba group has experimented with longer fermentation times during post-harvest processing—and this year they nailed it. Uniformly ripe cherries were pulped to remove the skin and fruit, then the coffee seeds were sealed in a fermentation tank for roughly 72 hours with limited oxygen. Farmers stirred the coffee several times throughout the process to maintain a consistent temperature and monitored pH at each interval to prevent excessive acidity. Rather than following a fixed timeline, fermentation ended when the pH landed between 3.5 and 3.8. The coffee was then washed with cold, clean water and moved to raised beds to dry in the sun for about two weeks.

The community of Fundochamba sits high in the Andes near Peru's northern border, with growing conditions ideal for exceptional coffee: high elevation, excellent varieties, and a sunny but cool microclimate. Capamaco Trading, one of our export partners in Ecuador, has partnered with a group of 14 farmers in the area since 2018, offering hands-on agronomic support and training in post-harvest processing. Capamaco connected us with this group in the 2020 harvest, and we’ve purchased the majority of the group's coffee each season since.