THE ORIGIN REPORT
Colombia Pink Bourbon Cake
Region: Huila - Tomila - Caldas
Elevation: 1750 MASL
Varietal: Pink Bourbon
Process: Honey/Banana Co-Ferment
About Colombia Pink Bourbon Cake
Some coffees are all about showcasing terroir. Others explore just how far thoughtful processing can push flavor. Colombia Pink Bourbon Cake definitely falls into the latter category.
Produced by Forest Coffee, this innovative Colombian coffee begins with Pink Bourbon varietal of coffee cherries sourced from coffee-growing families across Huila, Tolima, and Caldas. The freshly harvested coffee is transported to El Vergel Estate in Tolima for processing, where an extended honey process incorporating yeast and banana fermentation transforms an already exceptional variety into something unconventional.
The result is a coffee that lives up to its name: sweet, creamy, fruit-forward, and remarkably dessert-like.
What Makes This Colombian Coffee Unique
Pink Bourbon has become one of Colombia’s most sought-after coffee varieties, prized for its vibrant acidity, sweetness, and complex flavor potential. Pink Bourbon Cake takes that foundation and pairs it with the experimental processing techniques for which Forest Coffee and El Vergel Estate have become known.
After harvest, the coffee cherries undergo a 48-hour pre-fermentation in sealed bags. The cherries are then depulped, leaving the sugary mucilage surrounding the seeds intact. From there, the coffee undergoes an additional five-day fermentation with yeast and banana before being pre-dried under the sun, mechanically dried for consistency, and stabilized for 30 days.
This extended process is designed to build sweetness, texture, and pronounced fruit character, creating a cup that feels almost confectionary while maintaining the complexity we love about Pink Bourbon.
Tasting Notes: Banana, Cake, and Juicy Fruit
There’s really no getting around it: this coffee is a treat. Ripe banana leads the cup with a creamy fruit sweetness, followed by a candy-like character that gives the coffee brightness. As it cools, softer notes of yellow cake and milk chocolate emerge, rounding everything out with a rich, silky finish.
Despite all that sweetness, Pink Bourbon Cake isn’t simply a novelty coffee. The underlying Pink Bourbon brings enough structure and complexity to keep the cup interesting, while the extended fermentation creates an especially lush texture.
For anyone who gravitates toward expressive co-ferments or experimental processes, this one delivers.
Why We Love This Colombia Coffee
We’ve always loved coffees that challenge expectations, and Colombia Pink Bourbon Cake does exactly that.
Forest Coffee was founded around the idea of using innovative processing, education, and more direct connections to international markets to create additional value for Colombian coffee producers. Today, its network includes hundreds of coffee-growing families, with coffees sourced from different regions and processed through projects like El Vergel Estate.
Pink Bourbon Cake is a great example of what can happen when exceptional raw material meets that experimental approach to processing. It’s sweet and approachable enough to simply be delicious, but unusual enough to give coffee nerds plenty to talk about.
If you loved some of our more adventurous Colombian coffees and co-ferments, this is one you’ll want to try. It’s funky without becoming overwhelming, dessert-like without losing its identity as coffee, and exactly the kind of unexpected cup that keeps us excited about what specialty coffee can be.
