Catación Pública

Catación Pública opened with a teaching mission. Founder Jaime Duque wanted to fix the strange situation where most Colombians had never tasted their own country's good coffee, let alone good coffee from anywhere else — and built a café around the cupping table to do it.

The Usaquén space splits into two: a public café where you can order a cortado and a pastry like any specialty shop, and a back-room professional lab certified by the Specialty Coffee Association. The lab runs scheduled public cuppings most weekends — open to anyone with thirty thousand pesos and curiosity — alongside barista courses and brewing classes.

The bean menu is unusually deep for Bogotá. Where most local cafés stay loyal to Colombian micro-lots, Catación pours Ethiopian, Rwandan, and Indonesian alongside them, so you can taste a Colombian Pink Bourbon next to a Yirgacheffe and understand what regional terroir actually means. If you only have time to learn one thing about Colombian coffee while in Bogotá, learn it here.