"Upon grinding, lavender and ripe peach rise first, with papaya underneath. On the palate, juicy peach leads while papaya smooths the mid. As it cools, more yellow fruits and lemongrass appear, finishing bright, complex, and clean."

Los Nogales’ Bloom Pink Bourbon is built around the Equilibrium approach: a deliberate balance between traditional harvest discipline and tightly managed post-harvest technique, with the aim of letting varietal and place stay recognizable in the cup. The farm’s work is organized by defined profiles, and Bloom is produced exclusively from a single, traceable lot rather than blended across multiple blocks. Each step is designed to reduce noise—clean fruit selection, controlled microbial activity, and consistent drying—so the coffee reflects what was grown rather than what was “added” in processing. The result is a small, repeatable expression of Los Nogales’ method of linking field decisions to fermentation and drying outcomes.

Finca Nogales sits in Bruselas, Pitalito, in Colombia’s Huila department, a zone known for steep terrain and strong day-to-night temperature shifts. Bloom comes from the Gualanday lot at 1,700 masl, positioned on a steep mountainside face. The site is described as having ample shelter from direct sun, shaping a cooler, steadier microclimate even at this comparatively lower elevation. That protection supports even cherry development and helps maintain quality consistency across harvests.

The lot is planted to Pink Bourbon, with about 5,000 trees dedicated to producing all of the coffee used for Bloom. Pink Bourbon is valued here for how clearly it can communicate both microclimate and post-harvest choices, especially when picking and separation are strict. Keeping the lot single-variety also allows the fermentation culture to be managed without cross-varietal variability. In cup, the profile is presented as floral and fruit-driven, with notes referenced as lavender, peach, and papaya, and additional yellow-fruit and lemongrass nuances as it cools.

Harvest begins with selective picking focused on ripe cherries, followed by washing with treated water to remove surface impurities before processing. The cherries are then submerged for density separation, removing floaters and concentrating the lot to the ripest, most intact fruit prior to fermentation. A brief “thermal fusion” step follows: cherries are submerged in water at 80°C for 20 seconds to pasteurize and encourage sugar availability for the next stages. Depulping is done with a modified pulper designed to extract juice from the cherry skin, and that juice is incorporated into the fermentation environment.

Fermentation runs for five days, using the coffee’s own sugars extracted during pulping and a small addition of pre-fermented yeast. Those microorganisms are recovered from coffee must, then clarified and preserved using beans from the same variety to support fermentation quality while maintaining a link to the lot’s character. After fermentation, the coffee is dried on raised beds under the sun for about 15 days, aiming for slow, even dehydration to reach storage-ready moisture. This end-to-end sequence—selection, pasteurization, juice-managed fermentation, and extended bed drying—is the core of the Bloom protocol.

Variety : Pink Bourbon
Altitude : 1700 masl
Process : Experimental (Thermal Fusion; 5-day fermentation; raised-bed sun drying)
Origin : Bruselas, Pitalito, Huila, Colombia