Artisan Roast: San Francisco: Costa Rica, Natural

Beneath the endless blanket of banana trees in Tarrazú grow some of Costa Rica’s finest coffees, produced by a patchwork of cooperatives and farms equal in their ability to craft delicious unique brews. Of the cooperatives, Coope Tarrazú have a long-standing reputation in the community, providing a wholistic outreach beyond coffee and farming services. Over the last few years, they have evolved their community group processing, built new skills within their member base, and adapted to modern specialty coffee so producers can gain visibility for their diversity and quality.

The San Francisco de Leon Cortes community sits is a micro zone of high altitude and plunging valleys around the town of Llano Bonito. At altitudes of nearly 2000m above sea level the night is crisp, cool and extend ripening of coffee fruit during the dry harvest period. The community’s producers drop their sugar laden fruit off at local collection stations, where it’s then taken daily to the co-op’s processing zone in nearby San Juan. San Juan is a down in the valley and this drop in altitude provides a crucial temperature difference for the drying of the coffee ready for shipping.

The drying is managed through controlled in-cherry fermentation to bring out lavish, delicious fruit like flavours. Strawberry and tangerine citrus mix harmoniously with cacao nib and ripe red cherry flavours. The coffee has an indulgent light muscovado sugar sweetness to it along with a kirsch-like finish, adding emphasis to the cherry like nature of the brew.

San Francisco has lots of brewing options available and it’s very much a coffee that crosses over from filter or French press brewing into the bright berry forward espresso style coffee that represents modern specialty.

Filter and aeropress will bring the most out in the interplay of citrus and red fruit, adding violet florals and a cheesecake like texture to the mouthfeel.