We suggest a scenario where the three light quark flavors are sequentially deconfined under increasing pressure in cold asymmetric nuclear matter as, e.g., in neutron stars. The basis for our analysis is a chiral quark matter model of Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (NJL) type with diquark pairing in the single flavor color-spin-locking (CSL), 2-flavor (2SC) and 3-flavor color-flavor locking (CFL) channels, and a Dirac–Brueckner–Hartree–Fock (DBHF) approach in the nuclear matter sector. We find that nucleon dissociation sets in at about the saturation density, n0, when the down-quark Fermi sea is populated (d-quark dripline) due to the flavor asymmetry imposed by β-equilibrium and charge neutrality. At about 3n0 u-quarks appear forming a 2-flavor color superconducting (2SC) phase, while the s-quark Fermi sea is populated only at still higher baryon density. The hybrid star sequence has a maximum mass of 2.1 M⊙. Two- and 3-flavor quark matter phases are found only in gravitationally unstable hybrid star solutions.