Colombia’s shift from washed and classic to designed and expressive
Colombia’s coffee story is familiar to most specialty drinkers: high elevation, varied microclimates, hundreds of thousands of smallholders, and a national preference for clean, bright, washed lots. What’s newer, and increasingly influential, is how Colombian producers are pushing the boundaries of post-harvest science to create next-level flavour experiences.
Techniques once found only in experimental corners of wine and beer, starter-culture inoculation, controlled anaerobic maceration, and even co-fermentation with fruit, are now part of Colombia’s forward edge. Among the most visible champions of this movement is Café Uba, a producer group that treats fermentation as its core craft. Parallel to industry practice, Colombian researchers at Universidad de los Andes have been mapping the microbial and metabolomic changes during controlled fermentations, giving producers a scientific basis for repeatability and quality gains.
Colombia remains a powerhouse for high-quality arabica, but the last five years have seen a rapid diversification of processing styles. Producers who long excelled at clean washed profiles are now designing fermentations to layer sweetness and exotic aromatics without losing cleanliness. You’ll find carbonic macerations, extended cherry soaks, honey processes, and, most controversially, co-ferments in which fruit or botanicals are intentionally introduced alongside yeasts and bacteria during fermentation. Specialty coffee media and competition rulebooks have had to catch up: by late 2023, the World Barista Championship formally clarified how infused and co-fermented coffees can be used on stage, reflecting the style’s growing prominence.
What co-fermentation means in coffee
Co-ferment in coffee generally means adding fruit, flowers, herbs, or their macerates to coffee during controlled fermentation. The goal is not to flavour the beans superficially, but to shape microbial metabolism and the resulting precursor compounds in a way that survives roasting and extraction. Done well, the cup can feel shockingly fruit-forward, with lifted esters, tropical acidity, and velvety textures; done poorly, it can taste muddled or artificial.
Colombia has become a proving ground for the technique, with producers developing stepwise protocols, such as temperature staging, pH management, oxygen control, and selective inoculation, to bring order to what would otherwise be chaotic fermentations. Case-in-point examples include watermelon co-ferments from Finca Milán and other fruit-must approaches.
From farms to bioreactors
Café Uba is often cited by importers and roasters as a leader in Colombia’s experimental wave. Founded in 2014 by third-generation producer Julio César Madrid and Julio Andrés Quiceno, Café Uba consolidates production from three family farms, La Riviera, Milán, and Buenos Aires, and channels it through a processing program designed for precision and repeatability. The idea was not only to produce high-quality lots, but to experiment systematically with fermentation and drying, positioning Café Uba as both a farming operation and a processing laboratory. By centralising production from the family farms, Café Uba could invest in infrastructure like bioreactors, controlled fermentation tanks, and precise drying facilities that would be out of reach for smaller, individual producers.
Rather than treating fermentation as an afterthought, the team treats it as a product design stage. Their nitro process, for instance, places pulped coffee into a bioreactor with fruit must and selected starter cultures, while actively managing the headspace atmosphere. These controlled fermentations can be staged after a measured oxidation in cherry and followed by structured drying and stabilisation; details that matter when you want the coffee to taste the same from batch to batch.
Finca Milán, located in the heart of Risaralda, has become particularly emblematic of this experimental spirit. Once a more traditional farm producing washed Castillo and Caturra, Finca Milán now serves as one of Café Uba’s innovation farms, where new processes are tested before being scaled up across the wider operation. Some of the first fruit co-fermentation experiments, using passionfruit, banana, or citrus must, were trialed here, and today Finca Milán is closely associated with competition-level coffees that showcase intense tropical notes and remarkable clarity. Together, Café Uba and Finca Milán illustrate how a family heritage in Colombian coffee can evolve into a platform for cutting-edge processing, marrying tradition with bold experimentation.
Science catching up with practice: Universidad de los Andes on starter cultures
Producers can tinker with headspace gases and fruit additions, but without microbial and chemical readouts, it’s hard to claim repeatability. That’s where Colombian academia, especially Universidad de los Andes, enters the picture. A 2022 thesis case study from Universidad de los Andes compared wet fermentations of Castillo where one branch was inoculated with a defined starter culture and another relied on spontaneous fermentation. Researchers used metagenomics and metabolomics to profile microbial communities and metabolite formation, then linked those to sensory outcomes on the green and roasted coffee.
Crucially, the work frames how inoculation and supplementation (including fruit additions) can shift both microbial succession and the cup’s aromatic intensity in a measurable way. The study situates coffee alongside other fermented foods where starters are routine, and it supports what many Colombian processors observe empirically: under controlled conditions, starters can raise flavour and aroma scores and increase consistency from batch to batch.
The findings from the Universidad de los Andes research are echoed by the broader scientific literature reviewing “omics” approaches in coffee fermentation, which point to a future where producers select starter strains for specific outcomes (ester-heavy fruit notes, reduced acetic harshness, or enhanced florals) and monitor process variables like pH, °Brix, and temperature with simple tools on the farm. Together, these threads suggest that Colombia’s experimental processing isn’t a fad, it’s a workflow being gradually instrumented and standardised.
Benefits, risks, and best practices
For producers, experimental fermentations can create higher-value microlots and diversify risk away from commodity pricing. For roasters, competitors, and coffee drinkers, they unlock clear, high-impact profiles that are memorable on bar, at home, and on stage. Transparent documentation: variety, farm, fermentation steps, additives (if any), inoculants, time, temperature, and drying curves, lets buyers understand what they’re tasting and replicate brew approaches accordingly. Café Uba’s process notes and partner descriptions are good examples of the level of detail that builds trust.
However, the controversy around co-fermented coffees is real. Critics worry about flavoured coffee by another name, traceability of non-coffee inputs, and uneven quality when processes are ad hoc. Poorly controlled fermentations can produce instability or off-notes (volatile acidity, phenolics).
Best practices emerging in Colombia
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Controlled environments: Using sealed tanks or bioreactors with temperature and pressure monitoring.
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Starter culture use: Selecting strains matched to desired outcomes; controlling inoculation with known cell counts.
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Measured supplementation: When using fruit musts or botanicals, producers quantify additions and track pH/°Brix.
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Staged drying and rest: Stabilising moisture, then resting parchment/green to fix volatiles and reduce variability.
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Documentation: Sharing protocols with buyers; it de-mystifies the cup and differentiates legitimate process design from gimmickry.
The road ahead
Colombia’s competitive advantage has always been its farmer base and logistics; its next edge is process intelligence. Café Uba’s bioreactor-plus-starter-culture template shows how a producer can create distinctive yet repeatable flavour architecture at scale. On the research side, the work on starter-culture from Universidad de los Andes gives the industry a language and toolkit to connect microbes to metabolites to mouthfeel - and to do so with enough rigor that quality gains can be reproduced, not just rediscovered.
Expect to see more coffees explicitly labeled with inoculant species, fermentation time/temperature curves, and the nature and percentage of any co-ferment additions. For competition and high-end cafe menus alike, Colombia is turning fermentation from a backstage variable into a front-of-house promise: clarity, intensity, and identity, by design.
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