Hatch - El Paraiso Amazake

In 2022 Hatch's head of coffee, Boris Lee, visited Finca El Paraiso. During his time there he cupped some koji processed coffee that Diego had been experimenting with and they began to discuss the possibilities. Diego and Andres were experimenting with Koji but were satisfied with the purity of the Koji they obtained. So Boris reached out to Christopher Feran who designed a coffee fermentation protocol similar to the making of amazake, for the source of high quality Koji spores. At last, some Koji spores were sourced from Higuchi Matsunosuke Shoten in Japan and sent to Finca El Paraiso. Koji spores (Type BF-3) were cultivated on a mixture of rice and coffee pulp for 72 hours. Afterwards, the coffee was submerged in a tank with the innoculated koji and a wine yeast culture. Ultimately making coffee pulp 'wine', akin to the production of amazake. After 72 hours the coffee is mechanically dried using the Eco-Enigma machine. This new lot was done with the Castillo variety and Hatch is even more impressed with the results!