Café San Alberto

Cartagena

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DESTINATIONS colombia cartagena Cafes Café San Alberto

Café San Alberto

San Alberto serves brews made from beans with the highest number of awards in the country, which come from a plantation in Buenavista, Quindío. Their coffee is brewed using a variety of fascinating methods, from classic to highly modern, such as molecular cupping. The Cartagena location of San Alberto (all branches are ceremoniously referred to as "coffee temples") offers "Coffee Baptism" programs that last a couple of hours and take attendees on a journey of coffee exploration. Other tours offered vary in focus, the one focusing on high-tech brewing methods being, perhaps, the most intriguing.

Cafes

Although Colombia exports some of the world's finest coffee beans, it is only as of recently that these have become increasingly available to country natives, rather than shipped off to be sold abroad. Beans that don't reach export quality continue to get brewed as the ubiquitous 'tinto' (which translates to "ink water"): a popular brew that's sold at every cafe and street corner, and often needs plenty of sugar to camouflage the bitterness. Colombia's budding coffee culture, spearheaded by young entrepreneurs, aims to introduce Colombians to unique flavour profiles originating in their own lands. Colombian beans are famously on the acidic side, with pronounced citrus notes (although coffee that comes from Colombia's north is known to be relatively less acidic, with more body). In Cartagena, one of the best places for an in-depth acquaintance with modern Colombian coffee culture is Café San Alberto, which offers a number of thematic workshops and courses (including tours of the plantation in Quindio, where all of their beans come from); for something quick and easy there are also multiple outlets of Juan Valdez Cafe (dubbed "the Colombian Starbucks").