Colombia Huila Pitalito El Tiple Excelso 2024

Pitalito Colombia Excelso Green Coffee Beans

Pitalito is the second most populous municipality in Huila, Colombia. The climate is humid, and temperatures usually range between 18-21ºC throughout the year except during May, June, and July, when the temperature dips to 12-14ºC.

This coffee is named for the Tiple instrument, which is used in traditional Colombian music. El Tiple is Genuine Origin’s way of making crowd-pleasing Colombia green coffee more accessible to roasters as a blend that explores Colombia’s distinctive micro-climates and flavor profiles. All the coffees were sourced from small, family-owned farms ranging in altitudes from 1,500-1,800masl.

In this coffee, you’ll find notes of milk chocolate, brown sugar and tart dried fruit, with a medium acidity and medium body. Perfect for espresso or filter coffees.

The Huila Coffee Department

The Huila region is always a favorite when it comes to Colombian coffee. In addition to high-quality – and often award-winning – green coffee beans, Huila is celebrated for its distinctly delicate cup profile, which features bright acidity, sweetness, and a fragrant aroma.

Huila’s proximity to the equator and it is rich with volcanic soil. Coffee from Huila has a signature profile: fruit and caramel notes, sweet acidity, and intense aromas. Huila’s two harvests occur between September – December (main crop) and April – May/June (mitaca crop).

Excelso – Colombian Coffee Quality Designation

The Colombia Coffee Federation classifies and evaluates green coffee quality by screen size and the number of defects present in a sample. In Colombia, green coffee beans are considered specialty if it scores above 80 points, has zero primary defects, and has no more than five secondary defects in a 500g sample.

The Excelso classification signifies that the green coffee has a screen size of 14. That means the beans have passed through a sifter with holes that are 14/64 inch wide. Larger-sized beans are often correlated with higher quality, although screen size is not the only indicator of coffee quality.

Another classification for coffee quality is European Process (EP). This indicates that there are no more than four defects per 1,000 coffee beans and is part of the sorting process that the coffee goes through before it’s packed and shipped.

Washed Process Green Coffee Beans

In the “washed” or “wet” process coffee cherries are floated and sorted to ensure consistent ripeness and to remove any defective cherries. The seeds (coffee beans) are then removed from their skins using depulping machines and typically moved to fermentation tanks to remove the mucilage—the remaining fruit remnants. Afterward, the coffee is dried until it reaches its optimal moisture level.

Washed processing has become widely popular, but, as its name suggests, can be highly water-intensive. The cup profile of washed coffees tends to reflect the terroir of the coffee. The processing method allows the growing conditions, the region, and the true character of the coffee to shine through.

Colombian Coffee

Over half a million families dedicate their livelihoods to producing unroasted Colombia green coffee on small farms that dot the country’s volcanic mountain ranges. As the world’s third-largest producing country, the volume, quality, and variety that comes out of Colombia year-round is staggering. Coffee from Colombia is never dull, and with 16 coffee-producing regions along three mountain ranges and two harvests each year, Colombia always has fresh coffee on hand. Read more in our Colombian Coffee Origin Report.