To Celebrate the Come Back of La Palma & El Tucán
20 boxes. 6 kilos each. For competitors who have been on a national stage before, are going back, and are paying for it themselves.
20 boxes. 6 kilos each. For competitors who have been on a national stage before, are going back, and are paying for it themselves.
A barista on the world stage spent somewhere between ten and twelve thousand dollars of their own money last year, before buying a single gram of competition coffee. Winning pays that back many times over, in sponsorships and in doors that stay open for years. But the bill comes due long before anyone has tasted what you can do, and that is the part nobody sees. The circuit is not slowly selecting for who trained hardest. It selects for who could afford to find out.
Competition is where this industry raises its own standards. Competitors read a coffee harder than anyone, they ask producers better questions, and what they do on stage changes what everyone expects a cup to be. Our coffee grew up inside that conversation, carried there by people who chose it.
We have taken a lot from that. It is time we put something back.
20 boxes. 6 kilos each. No bidding war. Just craft.
Sources: Perfect Daily Grind · Coffee Intelligence · The Pourover · Lux Cafe Club
Every podium starts with someone deciding to apply — and a lot small enough to fit in a 6 kilos box.
Here they are, in plain terms, so you know where you stand before you apply.
Submit a 2 — 2.5 minutes video. Tell us who you are, what you brew, and why it matters.
A jury of working baristas and roasters reviews against a transparent rubric. Your craft is what's being judged — not your reach.
We send the 20 selected competitors two or three roasted samples from the harvest. You taste, you decide, and we ship 6 kilos of the lot you picked, green. Variety, fermentation and drying data come with it.
Freight and import duties are at the recipient's cost. We handle the export paperwork and hunt down the best rate we can find, but the shipping itself we can't cover.
Direct line to our processing team for anything technical. And we would love to follow your season: send us photos, clips, voice notes, whatever you feel like sharing, and we'll put your journey and this collaboration on our channels, always with your name on it. Anything you'd rather keep to yourself, just say so.
Twenty-three champions and finalists have chosen La Palma & El Tucán on the world's biggest stages since 2016. A tribute to the dedication and mastery of those who have carried the spirit of Colombian coffee that far.
This picture is from the day Jooyeon Jeon won the 2019 World Barista Championship in Boston. She used a coffee from our farm.
It is worth sitting with what that means. One shot at a world title, a year of preparation behind her, and what went in the cup was ours. Not as a story to tell on stage. Because she needed it to hold up under the hardest conditions this craft has.
That is the trust competitors have placed in this farm for a decade, and it is why we know we can stand behind someone all the way to the last round. We know how our fermentations behave under that pressure. We know which lots hold up on the biggest table there is.
BEAT is us offering that on purpose, instead of waiting for someone to find us.
Submissions close at midnight EST. We read all of them, and we write back either way.
You taste two or three roasted samples, pick your lot, and receive 6 kilos of it green with its full processing data. Then we follow your season together and share your story across LP&ET channels, always with your name on it.
You're invited to become a BEAT Ambassador in your country — help organize a local cupping with our team and stay in the network for next year.
Tell us who you are, where you're competing, and why this craft matters to you. The form takes about 5 minutes. Your submission is locked once you press send.
You'll hear from the BEAT jury within 14 days at the email you provided. In the meantime, follow @lapalmayeltucan for updates and the public voting round.
— Felipe & the LP&ET team