Alex's Coffee Adventure

Not a lot to write about today, because I didn’t do too much today! (Hopefully yesterday’s post was good enough for 2 days’ worth of material.) I’ve mainly been focused on getting ready for what’s to come. Today, I talked a lot with Miguel, the director of the El Fénix cooperative where I’ll be working for a month, which was great. I also set up a chat with a local expert on the Colombian coffee scene, so we’ll get to meet up on Monday to talk. Finally, I visited the Usaquén neighborhood of Bogotá and went to a bunch of cool coffee shops there.

I took another electric scooter up to the Usaquén district, where I first hopped into a place called Café Quindio, whose array of manual brewing equipment in the front enticed me in. The coffee was served in a paper cup, which certainly lowered my expectations, but it tasted excellent!

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My whole time through Usaquén was spent trying to get to Catación Publica, one of Bogotá’s more famous specialty coffee shops. It took me a while to get there, though, because I kept stopping at cool coffee shops!

My next stop was at a place called Café San Alberto, where I had another great pour over.

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I grabbed some lunch at a hip looking place, where I finally tracked down a salad amidst the very meat-heavy meals that are typical of Colombian food. It was delicious!

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Finally, I got to Catación Publica. Catación Publica is hosting a Q Grader class next weekend, which is one of the first ways I found out about it. This is pretty impressive because I could only find 1 Q class taught in Colombia all year, and it turns out to be one of the two weekends I’m in Bogotá! I’m planning on retaking the washed milds triangulation there next week, barring any schedule changes. Also, their coffee was delicious.

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On my way back, I finally got to go to Amor Perfecto, which is probably the best known specialty coffee shop in Bogotá. They just opened a new place in the Usaquén district, which I stopped by. It was lovely!

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That was mostly it for the day. I got to spend some fun time walking around Usaquén and checked out the gym at my hotel, but besides that I wrote a couple of emails and had a few cool phone calls. Tomorrow’s a much bigger day: I’m going to Devocion’s milling plant to meet someone there at 9am, and will hopefully spend a good chunk of the morning there. Then at 3:30pm, I’m heading to the La Palma y El Tucan farm for the weekend, which I’ve heard fantastic things about!

Look for a fun post tomorrow. In the meantime, have a good one!

Alex