Farm Info

The Castillo Washed is produced by a small coffee-growing farm called FINCA LA JULIA.

La Julia is a coffee farm located in the mountains of the small rural town of Trujillo, Valle del Cauca between 1420 and 1700 meters above sea level, surrounded by forests, watersheds, and biodiversity.
La Julia cultivates varietals and produces high-quality specialty and estate coffees.

“In each cup, we offer more than an excellent Colombian coffee, we offer you the opportunity to contribute to the sustainable development of our planet and the well-being of the coffee communities of Colombia”.

Finca La Julia is owned by two siblings, the second generation of coffee growers, Niko and Karo. Their father, Octavio, built La Julia in the 90s, with Angela’s, their mother, constant support.
After the passing of their father in 2002, Niko decided to take on the baton in 2005. Karo moved back to Colombia, after living abroad for several years, and they started building on La Julia. Their mother backed their project up. The new JULIA was starting…
In 2006 La Julia obtained their first 2 Rainforest Alliance Certification, giving their convincement that this was the way in which they wanted to produce their coffee.
Niko and Karo are deeply committed to sustainable practices.

Castillo Washed Process

One of the most important and sensitive steps to produce specialty coffees is the process. La Julia’s aim is to have a mass with a minimum average of 24-30 brix degrees in order to have enough sugars to develop the fermentation really well. It starts by selecting and carefully handpicking in the field. Once the pickers arrive at their site with the ripest cherries from the lot, the floating process starts. In this step, the cherries are placed in a tank with water to take out the non-dense coffee cherries and coffee tree leaves that start floating.

After floating, the process continues by hand sorting the beans on raised beds before the fermentation process. In hand sorting, the unripe/partial unripe cherries and the overripe cherries are separated.

Once the perfect cherries are obtained, the intact coffee cherries are placed in tanks for the Aerobic fermentation process, with a minimum amount of cold fresh water to control the temperature (18-22°C) for 24 hours. Afterwards, the coffee is then de-pulped and undergoes another 66 hours of Aerobic fermentation process with a low amount of cold freshwater (18-22°C).

With the Castillo Washed process, La Julia put the fermented coffee to drain on raised beds for 1 day, then on the mechanical drier for 56hours at 32-34°C (the drier is turned on about 12hours per day). The drying time takes around 6 days.
Once the coffee is dried, it goes into GrainPro bags for 30-60 days for stabilization purposes. Afterwards, the next step is milling and electronic sorting.

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