Beneficio Las Cruces
Even if the harvest started early this year, the higher altitudes are still not picked. We are currently working on a project at Beneficio Las Cruces in the Santa Ana area on farm/block selection, processing and drying. We will this year do trials on about 10 different small farms and blocks. Coffees will mostly be demucilaged before soaked over night in clean water and patio dried. We are also doing drying trials on raised beds that might be implemented 2013. We will do trials with small amounts of high quality naturals for offer as well. For these coffees we are trying out different drying methods, like beds under shade VS patio at high altitudes with a cooler climate.
Los Pirineos
In Usulatan, on top of the Tepeca volcano, we will work with Los Pirineos, a farm devided in to several blocks with different varietals and altitudes up to 1500 masl. It will be small to medium sized batches separated based on different parts of the farm and coffee variety. The farm has also taken part in a Procafe project growing different varitals. As a result they have plots of of native coffee trees, natural mutants and hybrids originated from all over the world. Found flavors of extreme variations just by tasting the coffee cherries straight from the trees and will cup the processed samples soon. Long term we are looking at a joint venture project here to plant new varietals on a separate block.The Pirineos coffee will be processed at Jotagallo Ecopulpers. Here as in Las Cruces we currently do trials on soaking and drying and will decide the method for our coffees in the next few weeks.
La Divina Providencia
Lies in the area Palo Campana. Several of the farms here are known for the so called Kenya Variety that was brought in from Africa generations ago. This farm is noe exception and in general its a mix of very old trees of Kenya and Bourbon Elite (the heirloom Bourbon variety of El Salvador). By using the parra method, where they bend down the coffee trees for the new shoots to form several trees on one stem they are able to keep up the yield even for the really old ones. Together with the soil, climate and altitudes towards 1700 masl the producer believe the age is contributing to the unique flavor intensity of the coffees from the area. The coffees are currently processed at La Gloria mill, a traditional mill where they use dry fermentation before washing and drying. We will have some amounts of this coffee for current crop as well.
Expected arrivals
The picking from higher altitudes will still go on for about two more months. All our coffees will be will be harvested from now throughout first half of march and hopefully shipped in March and April. Standard preparation will be 16 up and zero defects. Most of it will be in Grain pro, but we will do a few coffees in vacuum.
