Co-fermented with cinnamon. Organic Colombian cinnamon, to be specific.

Edwin Noreña, COE judge, Q-Grader, 20+ years in specialty coffee, looked at his Caturra honey process and thought "what if we added spices to the mosto?"

So he did. Organic Colombian cinnamon, ground to powder, mixed into the fermented fruit juice during the second fermentation stage.

Most co-ferments use fruit. Mango, passion fruit, maybe some berries. Edwin went straight to the spice cabinet.

The result tastes like someone made a cinnamon bun and put coffee in it.

Same producer as the Pink Bourbon. Same expertise. Different experiment.

This time: cinnamon.

What's in the cup 🥧

Vanilla and cinnamon hit first, aromatic, warm, like walking into a bakery. Then caramel and molasses, bringing sweetness. Chocolate emerges mid-palate. The acidity is citric and juicy, balancing all that sweetness. The body is semi-creamy. The finish is vanilla cream, honeyed, persistent.

This is dessert in a cup. But it's still distinctly coffee, the Caturra variety shows through, the honey process adds its characteristic sweetness, and everything is enhanced (not overpowered) by the cinnamon.

Edwin designed this to taste like this. It's not accidental sweetness or random spice notes, it's intentional.

Details and Process 

• Origin: Quindío, Colombia (Circasia)
• Farm: Campo Hermoso (10 hectares)
• Producer: Edwin Noreña 
• Variety: Caturra
• Process: Honey with cinnamon co-ferment (36hr sealed + 3 days with cinnamon mosto)
• Altitude: 1,750 masl
  

First fermentation: 36 hours in sealed tanks. No oxygen. This increases bean temperature and opens the pores, preparing the beans to absorb whatever comes next.

After 36 hours, the coffee is depulped (fruit removed) and goes back into tanks. But now it's swimming in its own mosto, the fermented fruit juice from the cherries.

And then organic Colombian cinnamon powder to the mossto.

Second fermentation: 3 days with the cinnamon-infused mosto. The mosto is collected at the end of each day and added again from the top, ensuring even distribution and consistent contact with the beans throughout fermentation.

Total fermentation time: 4 days. With cinnamon present for 3 of them.

Most honey process coffees get pulped and dried with some fruit mucilage still attached. No extended fermentation, no added ingredients, just straight to drying.

Why cinnamon:

Most co-ferments use fruit because fruit is obvious, coffee is a fruit, ferment it with other fruit, makes sense.

Edwin used cinnamon because he knows how spices interact with fermentation. Cinnamon is aromatic, oil-rich, and those aromatics transfer during fermentation when the bean pores are open.

The vanilla and caramel notes in Caturra + the sweetness from honey process + cinnamon aromatics = coffee that tastes like dessert.

It's calculated. Edwin's been in coffee for 20+ years, was a COE judge, consulted for top Colombian farms. He didn't just throw cinnamon at coffee and hope, he knew what it would work well (and it does). 

How we're roasting it 

Light+ roast with good development to highlight the cinnamon and vanilla notes while letting the caramel and chocolate come through naturally. The honey process already brings sweetness; we're roasting to enhance it without overpowering the spice character.

Edwin recommends this approach, and after testing it multiple times, we agree.

Brewing notes:

It's great on conical and flat bed filter brewers

For water, 93-96°C , standard pour technique. It's easy to over extract, so be careful with not too hot or too many pours. 

Brewing on the batch brewer, we'd recommend 60 g coffee / liter. 

For a 1-cup recipe, we'd recommend starting with 

15g coffee / 250g water 

⏱ 0:00-0:10 - 50g water

⏱ 0:30-0:40 - 50g water

⏱ 1:00-1:130 - 150g water

Total brew time: 2 minutes and 30 seconds

About the farm 

About Edwin (again):

Same producer as the Pink Bourbon. Edwin Noreña. Cup of Excellence Judge in Colombia, Q-Grader, Q-Processor, former consultant for farms like Puerto Alegre, El Placer, and Primitivo.

Started at SENA (free education center in Armenia, Colombia's main coffee city), became an instructor in green coffee selection, spent 10 years there before consulting privately.

Campo Hermoso is his family's farm, 10 hectares at 1,750 masl in Quindío. He also buys cherries from other Colombian farms and processes them at Campo Hermoso, bringing his experimental approach to more coffee.

He tried the Santuario project (working with multiple farms), it didn't work out as expected, so in 2020 he focused everything on Campo Hermoso.

This cinnamon co-ferment is the result of that focus.

Final note 

If you've tried fruit co-ferments (passion fruit, mango, etc.) and want to see what happens when someone applies the same technique to spices, this is your answer.

If "coffee that tastes like a cinnamon roll but is still distinctly coffee" sounds good, welcome.

This is Colombian experimental processing going in a direction most producers don't attempt.