Bean Shop Guatemala Coffee

Light - Medium Roast. Candied cherry, toffee, dark chocolate. Finca Las Laureles is located in Huehuetenango in the Cuchumatanes mountain range of Guatemala.  This delightful coffee from Finca Las Laureles is a fruity juicy coffee with notes of red apple and cranberry, candied cherry and a lingering dark chocolate sweet finish. Hernan Lopez purchased Los Laureles in 1995. He has always had a keen interest in agriculture, especially coffee, so worked as a builder for many years, saving enough to buy a small plot of land, with the aim of starting his own coffee farm. The plot is only 2.7 hectares, but sits high in a valley just outside the town of San Antonio Huista, with a perfect microclimate for growing high quality coffee. The farm is named for the Laurel trees that grow there, now very rare in the region. The trees provide shade for the coffee, and also a small extra income through harvesting their leaves, also known as bay leaves. Hernan started with coffee gradually, initially mainly growing other crops such as sugar cane, while slowly planting the rest of the farm with coffee trees. Eventually, the whole plot was taken over by coffee, fuelled by Hernan and his family’s passion for the whole process of coffee production, working together to create the highest quality possible. Hernan is always looking for ways to improve his crop, such as selective pruning, and even beginning a small coffee nursery to explore the suitability of different varietials on the farm. The coffee we have purchased from Hernan this year is mainly of the Caturra variety, so has a distinct and clean acidity. This is backed up by an intense and rich sweetness, reminiscent of toffee, caused by the very long fermentation time during the washing process, of around 50 hours. The washed process involves completely removing both the cherry and the mucilage from the outside of the parchment with the use of friction, fermentation and water. After being harvested, the coffee cherry is then sliced open by either a metal or a sharp plastic blade. The two seeds (also known as beans) are pushed out of the cherry, which leaves the seed with mucilage as their outermost layer. It is essential in the washed process that all mucilage is removed from the seed which leaves only the flavour that developed in the cell structure of the seed prior to processing.