Artisan Roast: El Salvador, Los Pirineos, Honey Process

The last decade of coffee processing in El Salvador has been very much defined by a switch to producers innovating and diversifying their post-harvest processing towards honey and natural processing.  Maintaining high levels of coffee quality while making this switch is hard and Gilberto Baraona, the owner of Los Pirineos, is a great example of someone who managed to do it.  With a staggering 15 wins in the Cup of Excellence programme, Gilberto continues to improve and develop new aspects to the farms coffee.

This selection from the farm is a black honey process, so called because the coffee mucilage turns black on the outer parchment skin during extended very slow drying.  In the heat of the Usulutan region, this can only be managed under shade netting with careful management by the Los Pirineos team, who constantly rake the coffee to allow it to dry evenly, preserving sugars and maintaining flavour.

We’ve roasted this coffee to allow the care taken towards harvesting and processing by Gilberto to shine through. The nature of black honey processing helps accentuate sweetness along with dark caramel-like and dried fruit flavours. In this Red Bourbon micro-lot, this comes through as salted caramel and dairy-rich milk chocolate, balanced by dried fruit flavours of fig and raisin.  These sugar browning flavours along with the high level of sweetness are balanced off by a positive medium intensity apple-like acidity.  This is supported by a dense creamy mouthfeel making it not only excellent as a filter but great as a single origin espresso too.