Episodes
Saturday Dec 30, 2017
Episode 477 on Monday the 1st of January, 2018. Christmas Espresso Blend
Saturday Dec 30, 2017
Saturday Dec 30, 2017
It just wouldn't be Christmas without a Christmas blend now, would it?!
Now in its TWELFTH (!) year of Christmas blends here at Has Bean, this is our take on the perfect espresso to enjoy at this wonderful festive time of year.
This blend can only be roasted throughout the month of December. Some fella in a red suit (no, not me!) said so, so make sure to enjoy it while you can!
- 50% El Salvador Finca Alaska Washed Bourbon
- 30% Guatemala El Limon Washed Pache
- 20% El Salvador Finca La Ilusion Natural Bourbon
In the cup you get an insight into my Christmas: dark chocolate, dried fruit, boozy and orange peel. Yes that's the Steve Leighton Christmas in coffee descriptors!
Saturday Dec 23, 2017
Episode 476 on Monday the 25th of December, 2017. Christmas Filter Blend
Saturday Dec 23, 2017
Saturday Dec 23, 2017
It just wouldn't be Christmas without a Christmas blend now, would it?!
Now in its TWELFTH (!) year of Christmas blends here at Has Bean, this is our take on possibly the best cup of filter coffee you'll enjoy this festive season.
This blend can only be roasted throughout the month of December. Some fella in a red suit (no, not me!) said so, so make sure to enjoy it while you can!
- 60% Kenya Kiriga Estate AB Washed
- 40% Ethiopia Mokanissa Bulega Washed
In the cup this delicate flower of a coffee has lemon rind, a sugar-type sweetness and a big bunch of flowers that hit you in your mouth on the finish.
Saturday Dec 16, 2017
Saturday Dec 16, 2017
On top of the Nymph Lagoon (a volcanic crater nested in Apaneca) Finca La Lagunita is located at an altitude of 1,650 metres above sea level. Within its 4.9 hectares, 3.5 ha. are dedicated to coffee and it's mainly Bourbon and Typica that mainly grow, there's a bit of Elephante too. The top of the hill has been kept as a native forest, a sanctuary of trees that are hundreds of years old, and as I'm sure you can imagine an area like that also attracts loads of birds and animals so it serves as a wonderful nature reserve too.
Who grew this coffee? Gloria Mercedes Rodríguez Fontan. She's a fourth generation coffee grower and owns + personally supervises six small farms located in the Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountain range: San José, Mamatita, El Porvenir, Nejapa, Nueva Granada and La Lagunita.
This piece of land was Gloria's first farm, and she holds it very close to her heart. When her father, José María Rodríguez died in 1975 it was time for her to learn all the responsibilities of coffee farming, he symbolically presented her with his higher altitude farm: La Lagunita. Gloria's father’s plan was to have his only daughter earn her own money to pay for her university and expenses.
I was lucky enough to get to visit the farm on my trip to El Salvador 2 years ago, you can read a little about it if you like...
The secret diary of a green coffee buyer aged 40 and 1/4
A trip around Central America Day 7 Apaneca San Jose
Gloria works under strict specialty coffee standards such as only harvesting fully ripe cherries, careful milling, appreciative pruning, etc., while she is blessed by amazing coffee terroir conditions such as altitude, sandy loam soils and rich in organic matter, among others. Coffee pickers are selected from her staff based on their experience and passion, and their understanding on the requirements to obtain high-quality coffee.
Each year Gloria employs around 35 people during the harvesting season, and all year round she manages a permanent "winter works" team of 15 people. The idea is to have a solid trained and skilled working group that receive better wages and working conditions. Gloria pays during harvest around 90% above legal minimum wage to give workers incentive and assure the best coffee cherries possible. After every production cycle, she gives a proportional bonus according to every week of labour of her “winter workers” that normally derives into a 1.2 months extra of income for them.
La Lagunita had four foliar fertilizations and two soil fertilizations, its soil type is predominantly sandy loam, and rainfall is between 2,000 to 2,700mm annually. With the additional income from auctioned coffee, Gloria plans to improve husbandry practices at her farm and keep focus on improving quality at both the farm and mill level.
This coffee is a washed coffee and I get quite a few emails asking me what on earth that means, well my friends...I made a video!
In the cup this is a classic El Salvador with milk chocolate loveliness and a walnut edge to it. However, it gets a little more complex than that, with hints of pear and an icing sugar sweetness that carries on in the aftertaste.
- Country: El Salvador
- Department: Ahuachapán
- Municipality: Apaneca
- Farm: La Lagunita
- Farmer: Gloria Mercedes Rodríguez Fontan
- Farm Size: 7 hectares
- Coffee growing area: 5 hectares
- Altitude: 1,650 m.a.s.l.
- Varietal: Bourbon
- Processing System: Washed
Saturday Dec 09, 2017
Saturday Dec 09, 2017
The story of Has Bean and Finca Limoncillo has been told many many times, but it's one that I really love to share. So much of where we are today has come from this relationship, and I'm super proud of everything that's happened in the past, as well as amazingly excited for where we can go in the future.
My relationship with Finca Limoncillo began in 2007, and back then we were buying their delicious coffee as part of a buying group. I loved it from the very first time I cupped it, and it was a coffee I just had to get. It was only after the auction closed that I discovered it was owned by a family in Nicaragua who were already good friends of mine, and indeed probably the only people I know from the whole country!
The following year I visited the farm with our importers and spent the whole trip begging them to bring the coffee in for us. Eventually, they caved in (possibly just to stop me pestering them!) and kindly did so.
This setup worked well for a time, but we received notice a couple of years ago that the importers were not going to be buying the coffee again (and for reasons other than the cup quality). This led to some frantic phone calls and a thorough search down the back of the sofa for loose change to fund buying twelve months’ worth of coffee all at once. There were many, many obstacles in the way of doing this deal, but we were lucky in that we were able to pull everything together in a very short amount of time.
The upside of all of this is that we now work directly with Finca Limoncillo instead of going via anyone else, and this is a relationship I’m super happy to have. This coffee has gone from a one-off Cup of Excellence buy to a fantastic long-term relationship.
Finca Limoncillo is located in Matagalpa and, at 171 hectares, it. Is. Huge! Situated at an amazing location, it boasts 9 waterfalls within the farm and is owned by the Mierisch family; as I have already said, they’re good friends, and also well-respected producers in Nicaragua. They’re known for their experimental processing, varietal work, and exceptional coffee.
The fact that the family are friends helps us drill down into the details of what they do for the people who work for them, and the information continues to prove to me that good people grow good coffee.
On the farm, the family:
- Pay their staff 30% more than what is typical minimum wage.
- Provide free housing for 60 families.
- Provide free electricity and running water for their workers' homes.
- Provide free food for all workers.
- Provide free daycare facilities for families to use.
- Provide free healthcare facilities.
- Employ on-site teachers who educate the staff and teach other skills, such as pottery and weaving. The goal is to help staff diversify their skills. The teachers are also paid twice the wages they would receive in the cities.
The coffees we receive from Limoncillo are fantastic and they come from a fantastic relationship. Erwin Mierisch has visited Stafford many times, and it's always a pleasure to have him around. Last time he was over he ended up at a Weird Beard tap takeover in Manchester, talking to two Weird Beards about crazy brewing / coffee farming ideas! A coffee from Finca Limoncillo (the 'Funky Red Pacamara') is used in two of Weird Beard's beers: Black Perle and Double Perle, both of which are mighty delicious beers!
So what's this Ethiosar varietal, I hear you ask? Well, this is the fourth year we've been lucky enough to have some, and it comes from the hard work of the Mierisch family and their cousin Ricardo. He owns a farm near to Limoncillo, but at a much lower altitude of 800 metres above sea level. Ricardo noticed that his yield and his plants were suffering and that they seemed to be becoming more suscep7tible to disease. He put this down to growing issues in Nicaragua, a change in climate, increased rains and his low altitude. But from experiments he was running on the farm, he noticed that this newly-spliced varietal he had put together was thriving. It was fruiting much more than the other plants and was not suffering.
The varietal, Ethiosar, is a stable hybrid plant. It's a cross of an Ethiopian variety (Sudan Rume) with a Sarchimor (a cross of a Villa Sarchi with a Timor variety). The offspring of this plant is then crossed once again with a Villa Sarchi, which is an improved Caturra / Bourbon from Costa Rica.
The Timor variety is the Robusta variety used to produce all the Catimors. In short, it only has a very small percentage of Catimor in it, thus making it very resistant to leaf rust in most parts of the world. The Sudan Rume is a very old variety of Typica from Ethiopia. Both Sudan Rume and Villa Sarchi are known for their great cup characteristics.
What Ethiosar does is increase production by up to 40% whilst only needing 2,800 plants per manzana, whereas with Caturra you would need 4,000 plants. This may not seem important until you begin to think that each plant needs fertiliser. So not only are you getting more yield but it's cheaper to grow because you need less fertiliser and less plants (plants have to be grown or bought), and it's also quicker to pick. On top of all of this, it's super tasty.
In the cup think green apple meets caramel down a dark alley and they mix themselves up. There's also an apple juice like acidity + a dark chocolate finish = leaving you wanting more!
- Country: Nicaragua
- Municipality: Yasica Norte
- Region: Matagalpa
- Farm name: Limoncillo
- Farmer: Dr Erwin Mierisch
- Farm size: 171 hectares
- Coffee growing area: 109 hectares
- Harvest months: December–February
- Diurnal temperature cycle: average: high 28° C, low 20° C
- Altitude: 1,200 m.a.s.l.
- Varietal: Ethiosar (Ricardo)
- Processing system: Pulped Natural
Monday Dec 04, 2017
Monday Dec 04, 2017
I first discovered El Limon on my trip to Guatemala in early 2013, at the time we'd never bought coffee directly from Guatemala; but since then this has become one of our strongest and most amazing relationships.
My friend Raul (who you may remember as the World Barista Champion of 2012!) in Guatemala had been buying coffee from these guys for a couple of years and was very keen for me to go and meet them. Located around an hour's drive to the east of Guatemala City in the small town of Palencia, this farm sits at an altitude of between 1,600 and 1,800 metres above sea level. It's owned by Guadalupe Alberto Reyes, who used to be the Mayor of Palencia and helped to build and develop the town.
Palencia is not part of the eight regions of coffee as defined by Anacafé, but you can see a lot of development in the zone, and this farm is a perfect example of that development. I like being in places that are working to be hot and up-and-coming, as well as those that are established players.
One of the main reason I love El Limon is the desire to experiment, it mostly produces Bourbon and Caturra but also plays around with a few other varietals. The experimentation comes from the motivation of 'Beto', who has really focused on the farm in the last three years. He wanted to take more care in every step they take – from picking to processing, to shipping – and also take more care in the agronomy of the farm. This is very much a family affair; his wife and son also work on the farm, along with Beto's siblings. In fact, his son is studying agronomy at the local college for the benefit of the farm.
The dedication and care devoted to each step of production is reflected in the fact that they have built a new wet mill so that they can separate different lots and have control over the quality of the coffee. Previously the mill could process only one lot; now they are able to process many lots, and keep separate days' pickings and varietals in their own parcels. With this wet mill came another opportunity, which was for neighbours and people within the region of Palencia to bring their coffees to the mill where they could get them processed. Again, another sign that this is a hot spot for Guatemalan coffee.
As time moves on Beto doesn't want to stand still and is continuing to invest in the farm, recently he showed me lots of new planting during my visit, as well as a lot of building work around the wet mill. He is also building a QC lab and new accommodation for people working on the farm, it was a real hive of activity.
Beto and his family have always been the perfect hosts when I have visited the farm, they are such welcoming people and take great pride in showing me around their farm. 1 of the kindest things they've done for me is welcome me into their home when I am visiting, and they always prepare the most amazing meals! When you travel as much as I do, mid-trip you find yourself longing for something big, home-cooked and not from a restaurant or roadside pop-up cafe...traditional Guatemalan meals are just the ticket and I always look forwards to the food, but mainly I look forward to the company.
In the cup expect a super hit of lemon and lime, then it pushes blood orange into the citrus party. Hints of milk chocolate can’t hide the beautiful crisp acidic finish.
- Country: Guatemala
- Region: Palencia
- Farm: El Limon
- Farmer: Guadalupe Alberto Reyes
- Altitude: 1,600 m.a.s.l.
- Varietal: Caturra
- Processing method: Washed