Los Pirineos Pacamara

Los Pirineos Pacamara

An intense and fruity Pacamara coffee with notes of tart red berries, stone fruit & dark chocolate.

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About this coffee

Cultivar: Pacamara

Flavour notes: Tart red berries, stone fruit & dark chocolate

Producer: Diego Baraona
Country: El Salvador
Region: Tecapa-Chinameca, Usulutan
Process: Washed
Harvest date: February 2025

More about the cultivar

Pacamara is a crossing between Pacas and Maragogipe that can have very interesting cup profiles. It was released to farmers around El Salvador a bit early before it was a stable cultivar. It means you will get different outcomes when you plant the seeds from existing plants which means you can find really great tasting ones and some that are not so tasty. For many years our friend and coffee farmer Gilberto Baraona planted a great selection of Pacamara on his farm and he was able to get numerous top 10 placements at the El Salvador Cup of Excellence before he passed away. Fortunately his son, Diego is carrying on his legacy and continue to produce top quality Pacamara coffees.

How the coffee was produced

Picking and sorting

  • All cherries are selectively picked by hand. Unripe and damaged cherries are removed by hand from the ripe cherries before processing.


Depupling, fermenting & washing

  • Coffee cherries are de-pulped before they are dry-fermented over night. The next morning, the mucilage is washed off the parchment coffee before the coffee is taken to the drying beds.


Drying

  • The coffees we buy from Los Pirineos are all dried slowly on raised beds and most beds are covered with shade nets. During drying the coffees are raked throughout the day to ensure even drying. At night it gets covered to prevent condensation and the risk of the coffee gaining moisture in the drying process. Once the coffees are dried, they are stored in air tight grain pro bags before the they get milled and sorted on the farm. The coffees are also packed in vacuum packs on the farm before they are shipped to Norway.

Shipping

For our Norwegian customers, we offer three shipping options:

  1. Pakke i Postkassen - With Pakke i Postkassen, tracking is provided, and delivery is estimated within 2-3 business days.
  2. Pakke til hentested - The parcel can be collected from a Post in Store, Post Office, parcel locker, or parcel box. This option includes tracking, with delivery expected within 1-5 business days.

For all international orders, we ship via DHL - Worldwide Express. This shipping method includes tracking, and all customs duties and taxes are covered in the shipping price, ensuring there are no unexpected charges for your order or its importation into the final destination. The estimated delivery time with DHL is 1-5 business days. For more information about shipping, please visit our FAQ page here. If you have further questions, please contact us here.

How to brew

Filter

  • We strongly recommend using the correct measurements and brewing techniques when you brew our coffees. Use a digital scale both to measure water and coffee in order to get consistent results, and we recommend using between 60 to 70 grams of coffee per litre (1000g) of water, depending on the brewing method, water quality and coffee used.

Espresso

  • We strongly recommend using VST filter baskets. Both the 18g, 20g and the 22g basket is great for our coffee. The VST filters makes it a lot easier to extract the espresso properly which gives a lot more sweetness in the cup. They are also more or less identical to each other which makes it easy to be more consistent when brewing on several groups at the same time. You can buy the filters on our webshop, just make sure they fit your machine (ours fits all La Marzocco machines and machines with 58mm filter baskets). With the VST 18g filter basket, we recommend the following brewing parameters: 18-19g freshly-ground coffee, 25-35s brewing time, 35-38g of final brew liquid in the cup, 93°C-94°C brew water temperature.

Tim's notes

With complex tart red fruit flavours, notes of stone fruit and structured acidity, this is a great example of how complex a washed Pacamara can be. There is a good reason why Los Pirineos has won so many awards for their Pacamara coffees.
Often times you hear that Pacamara coffees can be a bit herbal or oniony in flavour, and I don’t disagree, but this coffee has none of those off-flavours. There are so many versions of Pacamara being planted as the cultivar is not uniform, probably because it was released before it was stabilised as a new cultivar. Maybe that is why there are so many different flavour profiles of this cultivar as well.
In my experience the Pacamara coffees from Los Pirineos  always taste good and rarely have any of those weird flavours. I believe this is because Los Pirineos was in fact one of the farms involved in the development of the cultivar and the team was able to select a good line for the farm. Today Diego produces high quality certified Pacamara seeds that he also sells to other farmers.  

El Salvador

Los Pirineos

Los Pirineos is located on top of the Tecapa volcano in Chinameca, Usulutan in El Salvador. It is over 150 hectares in size and the altitude ranges from around 1100 – 1400 meters above sea level. Over the years, Gilberto and now Diego Baraona have planted over 80 different cultivars of coffee on the farm that grows under partial shade from native shade trees.

Read more about the farm