Two Coffees, One Producer: A Processing Experiment from Bolivia

We don't often get to offer this kind of side-by-side comparison. Two coffees from the same producer, same farm, same varietals, same altitude – but processed in completely different ways. It's the kind of tasting experiment that gets us genuinely excited, and we think it'll do the same for you.

Both lots come from Brenda Palli's farm La Hermosa in the Caranavi province of Bolivia. One is Dry Fermented Washed, the other Anoxic Washed. And the difference in the cup? Remarkable.

Meet Brenda Palli

Brenda is a 29-year-old producer who's been part of the Sol de la Mañana programme since 2021. Her farm, La Hermosa, sits at around 1,580 metres above sea level in the colony of Villa Rosario – steep terrain in the lush green valleys just outside Caranavi.

To understand why Brenda's story matters, you need to know a bit about Bolivian coffee's recent history. It's been a rough couple of decades. Production peaked in the early 1990s at around 150,000 bags annually, but by 2020 that number had plummeted to just 22,000. Coffee in Bolivia competes directly with coca – a plant that's culturally significant, easier to grow, harvests four times a year, and often yields higher profits. Add to that leaf rust outbreaks, limited infrastructure (Bolivia is landlocked, so every bag of coffee must cross into Chile or Peru before it can reach a port), and the departure of the Cup of Excellence competition in 2009, and you've got an industry that was genuinely at risk of disappearing.

Sol de la Mañana (Spanish for "morning sun") was the Rodríguez family's response to that crisis. It started in 2014 when a group of local producers approached them asking for help. The family – who also run Agricafe and the 12 farms that make up Fincas Los Rodríguez – decided they had a responsibility to act. As Pedro Pablo Rodríguez put it: "If we did not take it, Bolivian coffee would have slowly disappeared."

The programme functions as a kind of school for producers. Before it existed, many farmers only entered their land during harvest season – there was little understanding of how to care for plants year-round, prevent disease, or maximise quality. Sol de la Mañana changed that, offering a structured curriculum that covers everything from nursery management to selective harvesting to financial planning. It now works with over 100 smallholder farmers, and producers receive 70% of the price their coffee sells for.

For a young producer like Brenda, this kind of support is transformative. It means her carefully harvested cherries can be processed using experimental methods that would otherwise be completely out of reach – methods that can dramatically increase the value of her crop and open doors to roasters like us on the other side of the world.

The Harvest: Quality Before Quantity

Here's something that sets Bolivian specialty coffee apart. To ensure only the ripest cherries make it into these lots, producers in the Sol de la Mañana programme typically do seven or eight harvesting passes across their plants. That's far more than you'd see in most coffee-growing regions.

It's labour-intensive work that yields smaller amounts each pass. But ripeness is everything when it comes to flavour development, and this meticulous approach ensures consistently high quality. The trade-off is that individual deliveries from each producer are often too small to process separately. Instead, cherries from multiple Sol de la Mañana producers in the same area are combined and processed together – with the largest contributor giving the lot its name.

For both of these coffees, that's Brenda Palli.

Dry Fermented Washed: Concentrated Clarity

Let's start with the Dry Fermented Washed lot. In the cup, it's super clean and crisp – white grape and orange up front, a white sugar sweetness running through it, and red apple on the aftertaste. Refreshing, lively, and immediately drinkable.

So what makes it "dry fermented"? Here's where things get interesting.

After the fresh cherries arrive at Buena Vista mill, they go through a de-pulper to remove the skin and fruit pulp from the seeds. In traditional washed processing, you'd add water to the fermentation tanks at this point. But for dry fermentation, the de-pulped coffee – still coated in its sticky mucilage layer – goes into closed tanks to ferment in its own moisture and natural juices. No added water.

This creates a more concentrated environment for microbial activity. The yeasts and bacteria breaking down the mucilage are working in an intensely flavour-rich medium rather than a diluted water bath. The result is more pronounced fruit character and heightened clarity in the cup. Those bright white grape and citrus notes? That's the dry fermentation doing its thing.

After fermentation, the coffee is thoroughly washed to remove all remaining mucilage, then taken to raised drying beds where it slowly dries to the optimal moisture content. It's this combination – the intensity of dry fermentation followed by the clean finish of full washing – that gives this coffee its crisp, vibrant profile.

Anoxic Washed: Fruit-Forward and Clean

Now for the Anoxic Washed lot. The flavour profile here is noticeably different – plenty of fruit sweetness and body, starting with orange before shifting into pineapple and finishing on peach. A delicate hint of clove on the aftertaste makes it distinctive without being overpowering. Despite being a washed coffee, it drinks more like what you'd expect from a natural.

Both "anaerobic" and "anoxic" mean "without oxygen", but in coffee processing they can refer to quite different approaches. And here's where it gets a bit technical – but stick with us, because the science is genuinely fascinating.

If you've ever made sourdough, you already understand the basics of fermentation. Flour, water, time – and the microorganisms present do their thing, breaking down sugars and producing carbon dioxide, acids, and flavour compounds. Coffee fermentation works on the same principle: yeasts and bacteria transform the sugars in the cherry's mucilage into compounds that ultimately shape how your cup tastes.

Traditional anaerobic processing involves creating a sealed environment with coffee cherries in water, then allowing the yeast and microorganisms present to consume all available oxygen before switching to anaerobic fermentation. It's a gradual transition.

The anoxic method – developed by the Rodríguez team and Adrian, who runs the Buena Vista wet mill – takes a different approach. Cherries go into the fermenter as normal, but then a low-pressure CO2 flush is applied to remove oxygen from the system immediately. No waiting for microorganisms to consume it naturally. The environment is oxygen-free from the very start.

Here's the clever bit. Because there's no free oxygen to allow yeast or bacterial growth to begin on its own, a viable yeast population must be added to kick-start fermentation. The team use a strain isolated from a coffee cherry on one of the Rodríguez farms – a kind of terroir-specific starter culture. Think of it like using a sourdough starter that's been cultivated from the same environment where your wheat was grown.

The result is coffees that are intensely fruit-forward whilst remaining remarkably clean. It's processing geekery at its finest, and the cup quality speaks for itself.

Why This Matters

Tasting these two coffees side by side is a bit like a masterclass in how processing shapes flavour. Same cherries, same elevation, same varietals – but completely different cups. The Dry Fermented Washed is crisp and bright with white grape clarity. The Anoxic Washed is tropical and lush with layers of stone fruit. Both score in the mid-to-high 80s, both are delicious, and both tell you something about what's possible when skilled producers have access to innovative processing facilities.

It's also a reminder of what programmes like Sol de la Mañana can achieve. For a young producer like Brenda, being able to showcase her cherries through experimental methods like these isn't just about making better coffee – it's about building a sustainable future in an industry that nearly disappeared.

Bolivia's coffee story is one of resilience. A country that saw production drop by 85% over two decades is now producing some of the most interesting specialty lots in South America. Domestic coffee culture is growing – La Paz has dozens of specialty cafés where Bolivians are drinking and enjoying coffee grown and roasted in their own country. And internationally, discerning roasters are paying attention to what's coming out of the Yungas.

Coffees like these, from producers like Brenda and programmes like Sol de la Mañana, are exactly what that revival looks like in practice. We'd highly recommend trying them together. It's fascinating, delicious, and genuinely educational stuff.

We'd love for you to taste these two coffees together - it's the best way to experience how processing shapes flavour. Order both and use the code BRENDA at checkout for 10% off.

Shop the Bolivia Brenda Palli Dry Fermented Washed

Shop the Bolivia Brenda Palli Anoxic Washed