Here we have yet another superb coffee from El Salvador, brought to us through one of our favorite
direct-trade producer organizations, the Biokrop/Tierra Bendita project. Responsible for all of our
Salvadoran offerings, the organization provides logistical and financial support as well as educational
resources for a number of specialty coffee producers in El Salvador, focusing on ecologically sound
practices that require little to no external fertilizers, contributing to the overall quality of the coffees
that they produce. The owners of Finca San Andres, Jose Recinos and his wife Roxana, are no strangers to
coffee, however. San Andres is adjacent to his father’s (Francisco) Cup-of-Excellence-winning farm, Finca La
Nueva Esperanza, and Roxana also grew up in a coffee producing family. Jose and Roxana have clearly learned
and benefitted much from both their families as well as from the Biokrop project, and we are happy to share
their efforts! Jose hand picks the ripest Pacamara cherries from his farm for this lot, which are fermented
in sacks for 14 to 18 hours in the whole cherries before being depulped. The coffee is then lightly washed,
leaving about half the sticky mucilage (where the term “honey” comes from) on the beans. Finally, the coffee
is dried on raised beds for 10 to 16 days under the watchful eye of Roxana, who oversees the drying and
final processing of their coffee. What that translates to is a delightfully sweet coffee, with a toffee
aroma, well-balanced with notes of tangerine and nougat, cane sugar sweetness, and a juicy acidity with a
silky body.
How to Brew It:
This coffee performs best as a pourover or drip method, where the flavors are more distinct. The recommended
brew ratio is 1:15 with a brew temperature of 200–205 degrees.
