☕ Origin Spotlight: Colombia
A closer look at one of the world’s most versatile coffee origins
At Bugle Call, we source a huge variety of beans from around the globe. Your favorite cup of coffee is likely one of our incredible blends — a mix of coffees from different regions. For this Single Origin Series, I want to highlight the coffees that go into making these blends so fantastic, including this week’s spotlight: Colombia!
Why Colombian Coffee Is So Popular
You might know Colombian coffee simply due to how popular it is — they export the third largest amount of green coffee in the world (behind Brazil and Vietnam), and it’s known for its versatility in flavor.
There are two main grades of Colombian coffee: Supremo and Excelso, Supremo being the higher quality of the two in terms of bean size and shape.
Most of the coffee that we roast is from small, family-owned farms in the western area of Colombia known as the “coffee belt” (or “coffee triangle”). The area is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its biodiversity, rolling green hills, and small ranches dotting the region.
Many tourists visit Colombia just to taste a smooth cup of fresh java at some of the ranches surrounding this area and get a feel for the deep history of coffee that has been prevalent for hundreds of years.
A Roaster’s Perspective
If you’re wondering about how Colombian coffee performs in the roaster, I would definitely recommend it as a great coffee to practice on. Whether you roast it to a light, medium, or dark roast, Colombian coffee always tastes great, and it’s hard to mess it up!
Our year around offering is a Colombia Excelso that we roast somewhere between medium and dark. We also use this bean taken to a true medium roast for our limited batch, Last Call whiskey barrel-aged coffee. The beans are consistent in quality from batch to batch, and they are not very chaffy compared to other beans like Brazil and Ethiopia, allowing for not only a cleaner roast, but a cleaner roaster.
If you’re on a budget, even low-cost Colombian beans are still consistent, large, and have lots of flavor compared to lower grades of other origins.
How It Performs in the Cup
So how does it perform in the cup? At Bugle Call, we use Colombian coffee as a main ingredient in many of our blends-you might even recognize it as the main component of our Black Knight blend.
Colombian coffee has a very recognizable flavor — it’s very intense and sharp like a high-cacao dark chocolate, and it has plenty of body. If you need a pick-me-up in the morning, the burst of flavor from a dark Colombian roast is sure to do the trick.
On the other end of the spectrum, we also have a limited edition light roast Colombia Huila, and it couldn’t be more different! A citrusy, floral cup with a clean body — perfect for cold brew.
It’s clear that Colombian coffee has a lot of range, whether you are looking for something familiar and bold or unique and bright!