COLOMBIA HONEY + STRAWBERRY CASTILLO

Where to Start

New to co-fermented coffee? Start here. This Honey Strawberry Castillo is the friendliest, most immediately lovable coffee in our series — clean, bright, and bursting with the kind of ripe-strawberry sweetness everyone recognises and loves. No coffee vocabulary required.

It comes from La Pradera, the Arcila family's processing home near Armenia, and unlike the others in the series it's made without wine yeast — which keeps the flavour clean, direct, and fruit-forward. It's a coffee built on a simple idea: that something delicious and a little adventurous should be welcoming to everyone. Roasted fresh at our Upper Hutt roastery and rested 30 days.

Origin: Armenia, Quindío, Colombia Producer: Jairo Arcila Farm: La Pradera Altitude: 1,400–1,450 masl Variety: Castillo Process: Honey — 72-hour anaerobic co-fermentation with fresh strawberry Grade: 87 points (SCA) Roast Level: Light–Medium

Tasting Notes

Ripe Strawberry, Caramel, Lime

Clean, bright, garden-ripe strawberry leads — fresh and juicy rather than jammy. A warm caramel sweetness gives it body and comfort, while a lift of lime keeps it fresh and lively right to the finish. Of the four coffees in the series, this is the most straightforward and crowd-pleasing: less about layered complexity, more about pure, honest fruit sweetness. An easy coffee to fall for.

A Family Story

Behind every coffee in this series is one remarkable family. Jairo Arcila spent four decades as Mill Manager at Racafé, one of Colombia's largest coffee exporters, quietly building his own collection of farms on the side. Coffee was always the family business — but the specialty chapter began with his sons.

Carlos and Felipe Arcila moved to Australia, fell in love with the world of specialty coffee they found there, and came home determined to transform the family farms. In 2015 they founded Cofinet, the export company that now carries Jairo's coffees to roasters around the world, and together they built La Pradera — the processing facility where this very coffee was fermented and dried. The sons brought rigorous picking, sorting and post-harvest methods; their father brought a lifetime of knowledge. It's a genuine collaboration across generations.

That family-run model is part of why we trust this coffee. Cofinet pays well above local market prices for lots like these, runs free training for neighbouring farmers, and processes everything with a thoughtful, zero-discharge water-filtration system. When you buy this coffee, you're supporting a family doing things properly — and a vision, much like our own, of making delicious coffee accessible to everyone.

Why This Coffee?

At Frank's, our values of Generosity and Passion are at the centre of this one.

Generosity & accessibility: This is the gateway to co-fermented coffee — approachable, affordable within the series, and genuinely delicious. It reflects our vision of making delicious coffee accessible to the world.

Passion: It's the product of a family who pour everything into their craft, from the farm to the fermentation tank.

Producer Excellence: Even at the series' most accessible price, this is an 87-point specialty coffee processed to the same exacting standards as its higher-scoring siblings.

Excellence: Roasted by the team behind New Zealand's 2023 Barista Champion and a 4th-place finish at the 2024 World Barista Championship.

Brewing Recommendations

Friendly and forgiving — this coffee is delicious however you brew it.

For Espresso:

• Dose: 18–19g
• Yield: 36–40g
• Time: 28–32 seconds
• Temperature: 93–94°C
• A lovely, fruit-forward espresso that's equally happy in milk.

For Filter (V60):

• Coffee: 15g
• Water: 250g (1:16.5 ratio)
• Temperature: 93–94°C
• Grind: Medium
• Brew time: 2:45–3:15

Peak Freshness: 14–21 days post-roast, as the fermentation notes settle and integrate.

These are our recommended starting points — adjust to your taste. Great coffee is coffee you enjoy.

Questions about this coffee? Get in touch — we love talking coffee.