Dear subscriber,
This month, I have chosen three very different coffees for you to try, all of which I currently enjoy drinking. Two are floral, wet-fermented coffees, one from Ethiopia and one from Honduras, and the third is a honey-processed coffee from Los Pirineos in El Salvador.
As I write this, I am actually sitting on top of the Tecapa volcano, where Los Pirineos is located. I am here visiting Diego to follow up on this year's harvest, as well as to check on our biological farming trials that we are conducting on his farm and also at El Vikingo in Honduras. The results are very promising so far.
The goal of these trials is to bring coffee farming here closer to its origin in Ethiopia, where most coffees are traditionally grown organically under shade, and where some of the best coffees in the world are produced.
If you want to learn more about this project, I highly recommend watching the mini-documentaries we have published on our YouTube channel, featuring both El Vikingo and Los Pirineos.
Echemo (1st & 4th bag)
We have been buying coffees from Khalid for many years now, but it was not until my visit to his farm in November 2023 that I was able to make an impact on the quality of his coffees. During that visit, I was able to go through his production steps to see if we could agree upon a protocol for him to follow in order to try to elevate the quality of his coffees.
As usual, there were many small details that could be improved, some with small and others with major impact on the final quality. A few of the major ones included the separation of every daily picking, keeping each daily lot stored in airtight GrainPro bags after drying.
Drying the coffees under shade nets, keeping better control of the fermentation, and slightly changing the process were also part of what we changed and improved. This meant that I was able to evaluate several samples, each representing a daily picking, instead of just 2–3 samples as in previous years, where the coffees had been bulked together.
This particular lot has been processed in the more traditional way in Ethiopia, which means it is wet-fermented. Wet fermentation is done by submerging the parchment coffee (with the mucilage left on) under clean, cold water during fermentation.
The fermentation typically slows down due to reduced oxygen availability in the water and also due to the lower temperatures in the coffee pile during fermentation. This lot consists of several daily pickings. They were all wet-fermented for about 36–48 hours before they were washed and dried on raised beds under shade.
The washed coffees from Echemo are very delicate and soft. I find it is like drinking a white tea with some nice notes of peach and florals. It is very different from the typical Yirgacheffe or Guji coffees from the south of Ethiopia, most likely because it is grown in a different area and is from different cultivars.
Los Pirineos Pacamara (2nd & 5th bag)
This is a sweet and distinctly fruity Pacamara from Los Pirineos. Because it was honey processed (which means the parchment coffee was dried with mucilage on), you can clearly taste some subtle fermented flavours that remind me of strawberries and ripe stone fruits. These flavours are created when the mucilage slightly ferments while the coffee is drying on raised beds under shade nets.
I often find honey-processed coffees to be rough in texture and finish, but this lot was so sweet and smooth, with just subtle fermented notes that I could not resist buying it while I was visiting in March last year.
Making such clean honey-processed coffees is probably a result of the skilful drying process they have implemented at Los Pirineos. They turn and mix the coffees constantly throughout the day during drying to ensure even drying and to prevent the coffees from being affected by uncontrolled fermentation.
El Vikingo Geisha (3rd & 6th bag)
A few years ago, Jobneel Caceres Dios bought a small piece of land in an area not too far away from his first farm, Finca Nacimiento, which should be well known among our followers. He wanted to plant more coffee and different rare cultivars like Geisha. This year is the fourth year he was able to produce Geisha coffee from this new farm, and the quality is (as expected) getting slightly better every year.
Although it is not as expressive as the Geisha coffees we buy from Finca el Puente further south in Honduras, this is still a delicious coffee with delicate and subtle floral and fruity flavours.
This particular lot was processed with a slightly different protocol than his Pacas coffees from Nacimiento. Last year we asked Jobneel to avoid de-pulping the cherries right after they were picked and instead let the coffee cherries rest overnight and de-pulp the cherries the following morning.
This means the coffee cherries will start a slight fermentation prior to being de-pulped, and it also means the parchment coffee is dry-fermented in a tank for 24 hours before washing. This has added a more intense fruity character to the coffee without it being overly fermented in any way.
However, during my visit in March 2025, I realised that Jobneel had built a new wet mill by his house, which is situated at a lower altitude than his farms. This meant the fermentation of the coffee was a lot faster due to the hotter climate. I realised the protocol we had agreed upon was a bit risky, as the coffees that were processed in the new mill tasted too fermented for my taste.
Therefore, I asked Jobneel to ferment the coffee from Vikingo like they do in Ethiopia, which means it ferments slowly while it is submerged in cold water. This prolongs the fermentation but ensures it ferments at lower temperatures, which we have found to taste better.
The result is a cleaner and more crisp coffee with delicate herbal, floral and citrus notes. We are still working hard to improve this coffee for future harvests, and El Vikingo has been chosen as the test plot for our Biological Farming trials that we are conducting together with Biofilia. You can learn more about that project in the YouTube video we made from Jobneel’s farms.
