XX5 - Juan Camilo Trujillo: Raise the Bar
We anticipate this coffee will be roasted the week of August 23, 2026, with subscribers having the first opportunity to purchase. The fifth coffee in our wildcard series is an Aviary-exclusive nanolot that comes Jhon Didier's son, Juan Camilo Trujillo: a Chiroso doing its finest impression of an Ethiopian landrace grown in Ethiopia, presenting with complex, bright, fruited notes of orange, peach, blueberry and jasmine. All profits from the sale of this coffee will be donated to Raise the Bar to provide scholarships for its signature Level Up event in Minneapolis. From Christopher: "Last September, I flew to Colombia to teach a workshop for a group of producers who work with an exporter called Unblended. We broke into two groups to conduct processing trials. Andres Martinez, former biochemical engineer for the famed El Paraiso estate, taught a sophisticated washed method; I taught the process I’d developed for Basha Bekele in Ethiopia that went on to win the Cup of Excellence. "The workshop was held at Jhon Didier Trujillo’s farm, and in attendance was his son, Juan Camilo, who had recently started working with Unblended in quality control. His skill as a cupper meant that he developed a keen and quick understanding of what worked and what didn’t during postharvest processing—insights that enabled him to iterate rapidly as he began processing coffee himself. "A couple months later, Juan Camilo submitted a small lot to a regional competition held by Unblended using his own variation of the process we’d workshopped together—and won. Without a next generation of coffee producers, we won’t have specialty coffee; and without a next generation of baristas and roasters to showcase that coffee and help it reach a new audience, that coffee won’t have enough value to be worth cultivating. "This symbiosis underlies the important work undertaken by Raise the Bar, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides professional development, education, and community for early-career coffee professionals. Through their work, we feed the fire of specialty coffee’s next generation of ambassadors, outside of the expensive, often inaccessible pathways kept by legacy institutions such as the Specialty Coffee Association. "Through the sale of this coffee, Aviary is providing a scholarship to Raise the Bar’s flagship event, Level Up, which brings nearly 100 young professionals to Minneapolis for a multi-day retreat with hands-on workshops, mentorship, and a live learning cafe—in the hopes that Juan Camilo’s success can help create opportunity for other young professionals. "We're thrilled to have purchased all of this experimental 9kg nanolot from a promising young producer—who took a landrace from Ethiopia grown in Urrao and elevated it to the quality of its ancestral home, presenting with complex, bright, fruited notes of orange, peach, blueberry and jasmine." Raise the Bar is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides professional development, education, and community for coffee professionals, especially baristas, managers, and early-career workers who don't have access to the industry's traditional training pipeline. Our flagship event, Level Up, brought 80 people to Minneapolis for a multi-day retreat with hands-on workshops, mentorship, and a live learning cafe. 93% of attendees had barista experience but 28% had zero employer benefits and 44% didn't feel financially stable. We track real outcomes: confidence in negotiating pay, career advancement, and mentoring others at 6 and 12 months. We're now scaling to year-round education through Patreon, trade show activations with CoffeeFest, and Level Up 2.0 this fall. Our 2026 goal is $250,000. Every dollar goes directly to programming, scholarships, and the people doing this work.