Dark Matter – Berries & Cream, Colombia 200g

Where to start? Dark Matter regulars know we typically stick to washed versions when it comes to high intervention, process-forward coffees. So, if we’ve released a natural, you know it’s for good reasons. For funky/fruity lovers, this is a serious banger. Think big campino sweets vibes, strawberries and cream, boozy glacé cherries — super sweet.

On espresso it’s dessert-like with a big red fruits, yoghurty/white choc sweetness. In filter all the same, but with some real nice elderflowery florals too. We recommend turbos and big ratios on espresso and the same story for filter (1:16/16.5) and brewing 92C or less.

This process is a bit of a mouthful, but all you need to know is that Edinson’s pickers are handpicking ripe cherries, float them to sort underripe/defective cherries, and then ferment them in a sealed tank. The key is that tank has specific yeasts (microbes that each sugar in the coffee cherries and turn it into flavour compounds and aromas) and mossto (leftover juices full of wild and controlled yeasts and sugars used as a starter culture to kickstart the fermenting process) added to it to drive the fermentation in a targeted direction with a flavour profile in mind that compliments the Chiroso crop. The thermal shock is the addition of hot/cold water during the process which forces the coffee’s pores to open or close to allow these flavours created during fermentation to rush into the coffee (open pores) and be sealed inside (closed pores) for maximum intensity of flavour.