El Salvador
Finca Juana - El Salvador
250g
*Limited Edition*
QUALITY SCORE: 89.50
Cup Notes
Strawberry / Apricot / Dried Plum / Honey
Suggested for espresso and filter
when we roast
We freshly roast to order all coffees on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (excluding national holidays), and ship the same day! Cut-off time is 11:59pm (UTC+1) of the day before the roast day. *We only ship whole beans*
Details
- Producer
- Juana Barrientos
- Country
- El Salvador
- Terroir
- Santa Ana
- Altitude
- 1730 mt
- Process
- Classic Natural - Raised Beds
- Arabica cultivar
- Kenia Juana
- Picked in
- Feb - Mar 2019
- Arrived in
- June 2019
- Shipped in
- Jute + GrainPro
- Roast profile by
- Rubens Gardelli
- Roasted on
- Customised solid-drum roaster
THE STORY BEHIND
We are very happy to introduce this coffee to you. It has become landmark for us, since it was the same coffee that helped Rubens get to the second place of the podium for World Brewer’s Cup (check out the video here).
Originating from Juana Barrientos’ farm, our offering from El Salvador is a fantastic representation of coffee from the Santa Ana Volcano terroir.
Finca Juana counts 3.705 acres of land that before the eruption of the volcano Santa Ana in 2005, was producing at least 3000 kg. between wheat and Kenya coffee variety.
Even though after the disaster the production lowered to 700kg, Juana Barrientos kept cultivating the land owned by her family for 70 years now. “I feel really happy, I would have never imagined this” Mrs. Barrientos said after receiving a recognition for her coffee that helped Rubens get to the second place on the World Brewer’s Cup.
Juana Salvadora Barrientos' beans have an outstanding cup profile - strikingly fruity with a deep sweetness, that, while maintaining delicate aromas, has strong notes of strawberries. Although these notes are rarely accentuated in the Kenyan varieties that her farm is planted with, they are present in this lot thanks to the characteristics of the terroir - the micro-climate, the soil, the altitude etc.
Selective picking and post-harvest processing matter a lot, too. Juana’s very small production is harvested with the help of 8 family members.
THE VARIETY
Kenya Variety came from Kenya to El Salvador at the beginning of the 20th century, ten years before Scott Lab defined the very well known SL 28.However, for more then hundred years, it had time to evolve in El Salvador, creating a peculiar cultivar that spread among the farmers very fast because it was a highly rust- and cold-resistant variety. But only in the recent times its cup profile has been revealed.
THE FERMENTATION PROCESS
Classic natural process seems simple: pick the fruit, lay it out in the sun until it turns from red to brown to near-black, and then hull off the thick, dried outer layer in one step to reveal the green bean. It is a method suited to arid regions, where the sun and heat can dry the seed inside the intact fruit skin.
It is often referred to as "natural coffee" because it is straightforward, and because the fruit remains intact and undisturbed, a bit like drying grapes into raisins. Since it requires minimal investment, the natural processing method is a default to create cheap commodity-grade coffee in areas that have the right climate where the fruit and seed can dry out.
But it is a fail in humid or wet regions. If the drying isn't progressing fast enough, the fruit degrades, rots or becomes mould.
Natural-processed coffees can also be wildly inconsistent. If you want a cleanly fruity, sweet, intense cup, natural process takes more manual labor than the wet process. Even the most careful pickers will take green unripe or semi-ripe coffee of the branch as they pick red, ripe cherries. If these are not removed in the first days of drying, the green turns brown that is hard to distinguish from the ripe fruit.