Lychee YN-05 | Diego Bermudez Finca El Paraiso | Cauca, Colombia

PEACH RINGS • RED FRUIT • CANDY-LIKE

Don't let the name fool you—“Lychee” is the name of this particular Y-05 processing profile, not necessarily a promise that your cup is going to taste like lychee.

And honestly, we're not getting much lychee.

What we are getting is an incredibly aromatic, high-sugar cup loaded with peach candy, red fruit and overt florals. The wet aroma is almost perfume-like, and there's a huge candy sweetness that immediately reminded us of peach rings, with flashes of something almost blue Kool-Aid-like in its intensity.

As the cup develops, those louder candy and floral notes settle into juicy yellow and red fruit, with a creamy sweetness underneath. It's a strong, lingering coffee—the kind where the aroma and flavor seem to hang around long after the sip.

This is another incredibly unique coffee from Diego Bermudez and Finca El Paraíso, a producer known for taking an unusually technical approach to coffee fermentation.

The Castillo cherries are grown around 1,960 MASL and begin with a 72-hour anaerobic fermentation while submerged in water. After pulping and demucilaging, the coffee undergoes another controlled fermentation using El Paraíso's specifically developed “Yellow Fruit” yeast culture.

The coffee then goes through their signature thermal-shock process, followed by controlled dehumidification drying. The entire process is designed to develop and preserve specific aromatic compounds while keeping the finished coffee clean and structured.

And that's what makes Y-05 so interesting to us.

This is unmistakably a process-forward coffee, but we don't find it too funky or boozy. Instead, the processing shows up as huge aromatics, intense sweetness and an almost candy-like concentration of fruit. Think peach rings, red fruit, perfume-like florals and an almost electric blue-candy sweetness, all wrapped up in a creamy, lingering finish.

ORIGIN: Colombia
PRODUCER: Finca El Paraíso
VARIETY: Castillo
ALTITUDE: 1,960 MASL
PROCESS: Special Fermentation Washed + Thermal Shock
FERMENTATION: Aerobic & Anaerobic
CUP: Peach Rings • Red Fruit • Floral • Candy-Like