China Yunnan – Torch Coffee – Blissful Summer Ximeng – High Ferment Natural

Burman Coffee Traders

Details

Process

Natural

Roast Suitability

Description

This Yunnan Ximeng natural coffee comes from the far southwest corner of the province, an autonomous county under Pu’er City that runs right up to the Myanmar border. It is Wa country, hill farms and small plots instead of big estates, and coffee is a young crop there compared to the rest of Yunnan. China has been growing coffee for over 100 years, but almost all of it stayed in domestic and nearby markets, so most roasters in the States have never run a Chinese coffee through their drum. Yunnan carries nearly all of that production and Pu’er is the biggest piece of it, with Catimor as the workhorse variety and most of the coffee planted between 1100 and 1600 meters. Torch Coffee Labs is the group behind this Yunnan Ximeng natural coffee and the rest of our Chinese offerings. They moved into Yunnan in late 2014 and built their base in Pu’er, where they run farms, processing mills, a roastery, a training lab, a cafe and their export operation, plus a flagship in Kunming and their own farm in Manxieba Village in Simao District. Co-founder Marty Pollack has spent years on Yunnan processing work, including a long run with the honey method that put out more than 500 tons of red honey coffee. The teaching side of the company runs coffee education and certification labs across Asia, and since 2017 their Mountain Man Project has taken over 400 farmers through hands-on processing training, with professionals and growers working the same ferments side by side. They run hundreds of fermentation trials a year and will process lots to order, which is how most of these Ximeng coffees come together. Torch does the processing on this lot in Ximeng, and their naturals out of that area are built on long sealed fermentation rather than a quick patio dry. Their Ximeng double anaerobic runs about 30 days of anaerobic fermentation, dries down to roughly 35 percent moisture, goes back into sealed tanks for another 20 days, then finishes drying to 10 to 12 percent. The high ferment tag on