Colombia DULCE MISTERIO from Father's Coffee Roasteryis a coffee with a delicate, sweet, and beautifully tea-like flavor. The first sip reveals notes of hibiscus tea, which gives the coffee a light floral undertone and a pleasantly lively acidity. Immediately after , the sweetness of panela— unrefined cane sugar—adds a round, warm character to the cup. The aftertaste then features mandarins —juicy, clean, and slightly citrusy. The entire profile is elegant, sweet, and very well-defined. This isn’t a coffee that makes a bold statement right away; rather, it gradually opens up and shows just how pleasant a washed Pink Bourbon can taste when brewed over a filter.
Behind this coffee is Mauricio Duque and his Dulce Misterio farm near the town of Neira in Colombia’s Caldas region . Mauricio came to coffee after a major life change—when his export company went under during the 2020 pandemic, he decided to fulfill his dream and start producing coffee in a clean and sustainable way. He searched for a farm based on data from coffee competitions and soil analyses until he found a place with an exceptional microclimate and soil that gives everything that grows there an unusual sweetness. That is precisely why he named it Dulce Misterio, or Sweet Mystery. Today, he grows Pink Bourbon on 13 hectares at an altitude of over 1,750 meters above sea level and regularly measures the sugar content of the cherries and other crops using the Brix scale.
The processing is washed, but very carefully controlled. Pickers are trained to harvest cherries at optimal ripeness and receive a fixed wage without pressure to meet quantity quotas, which helps maintain high quality. After manual sorting and floating, whole cherries undergo 48 hours of fermentation in sealed plastic tanks. The coffee is then hulled with minimal water and fermented for another 48 hours in its own pulp. Throughout the process , Mauricio monitors the time, temperature, and pH. Finally, the beans are washed once and dried on African beds in a parabolic dryer at a temperature of up to 38 °C until the moisture content drops to 10–10.5%. The result is a clean, sweet, and precise cup.