We are excited to be featured in an article about anaerobic fermentation in Feast Magazine's February issue! Here's a snippet of what Feast's Nancy Stiles had to say about our anaerobic coffee:
Anaerobic fermentation takes these locally roasted coffees to the next level
Coffee isn’t usually thought of as a fermented beverage; however, a toasty roast has more in common with your favorite wine or IPA than you might realize.
As soon as the coffee cherries are harvested, they begin fermenting naturally due to their high sugar content. Typically, coffee is made using open fermentation, in which the air interacts with the coffee cherries, but some producers use anaerobic fermentation, in which the coffee cherries are completely deprived of oxygen and left to ferment for 12 to 400 hours.
Anaerobic fermentation often imparts a punchy, fruit-forward flavor to the beans, resulting in an interesting depth not tasted in more traditionally produced coffees. We recommend skipping the milk, sugar and syrups, as anaerobic coffee is best sipped black.
Parisi Coffee
Purists might not consider the Nicaragua Anaerobic from Parisi Coffee in Kansas City to be true anaerobic coffee. The beans come from Los Pinos Estate, where farmer Byron Corrales puts the coffee cherries in a heavy-duty black bag and then manually squeezes out the air, whereas some producers use chambers that create a sealed environment for the fermentation process. Corrales ferments the cherries for 48 hours before laying them out to dry in the sun on a patio. “Kind of like in a bourbon or a wine, that adds a little finish to the coffee,” says Nick Scott, head roaster of Parisi Coffee. The final cup has a syrupy body and a long-lasting sweet-tart finish with notes of Concord grape, mixed berry compote, hibiscus, vanilla and bitter orange. Scott and his team had never had anything like this when they first tasted it in February 2020. “[Anaerobic coffees are] curve balls, out on the edge, and you don’t understand until you drink them,” he says. “Go find them; they’re going to be incredible. You’re going to experience coffee in a totally new way.”
Visit Feast Magazine's website to read the rest of the article.
Learn more about our Nicaragua Anaerobic here.
