Perry reports from Colombia...

We got this email from Perry today with the following contents: [caption id="attachment_597" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Cupping at R.A. Cafe"][/caption] "I made it safely to Bogota with no problems... We started with breakfast at the Embassy Suites (pretty swanky) and headed to R.A. Cafe, exporters (and more, I believe) of coffee, and also the organization that is dry milling all of the Monserrate microlots.  We did a cupping of 5 different Colombia coffees, which were all good, but not outstanding.  It helped to get us all calibrated. [caption id="attachment_598" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Wall mounted espresso machine at Amor Perfecto"][/caption]

After the cupping we went to a local roastery, Amor Perfecto, where they are roasting fine specialty coffees, with amazing attention to detail  They do about 10,000 lbs a month on a 10kilo roaster, which comes out to be 38 batches a day!!!!  Crazy!!!!  The #1 and #3 Colombian baristas work for Amor Perfecto.  We had the #1 Colombian barista, Blanca, make us all espresso.  It was very good, balanced, but a very different style than Victrola´s syrupy ristrettos.  After that we saw their roasting operation, their espresso machine repair shop, and their mini dry mill!!!  Yes, they have their own dry mill!  Apparently it cost about $6000 US.  They are able to store their coffee in parchment, which preserves it better, and also to have great flexibility in purchasing microlots directly from producers.  How cool is that?  There was a wild wall-mount espresso machine that gets it´s water from a bottle (see photo).  Everything is in the machine, there is not a boiler in the wall.  Tiny!  It was neat to see someone here paying so much attention to detail with such success. From Amor Perfecto we took two cabs to the dry mill where the microlots are processed.  Craig and I were in a cab together that was a little hairy...how do they squeeze those tiny cabs between trucks and curbs?  I don´t know.  When processing the microlots they have to completely shut down the mill to run the microlots through.  After they go through the typical machine sorting and electric eye QC, the coffees are further hand-sorted.  We didn´t get to see that going on, but we did get to see the bags of the microlots." [caption id="attachment_601" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Vibrating bed sorters at the dry mill"][/caption] Sounds amazing.  We'll keep you posted of any further updates!