I have fun buying Honduran coffee because it consistently entertains me with the colors and designs printed on the burlap bags. But as to the coffee itself, it can be a tough sell. In general, light roasts are unpleasantly lemongrass toned, and French Roasts are a bit too charcoal tasting, so just at the verge of 2nd cracks is your best bet – and what you really hope for here is a solid drip coffee that is one step above a Colombia, sure to please a crowd, but nothing unique. Occasionally you stumble on a microlot of natural-processed Honduras, but the results vary widely. Citrus and stone fruit are likely hidden in the natural-processed lots, but so can be odd flavors of tomato, lavender, watermelon, or cardamom.
One interesting note is that Honduran green coffee does not store well. It is as good from April through June when it arrives in the USA. Buy enough to last you through the summer, and phase it out. After October, the brokers start slashing prices and trying to move it to anyone who needs a cheap filler coffee. The body and acidity become flat. But yet there is still a lemon note on the lighter roasts that make it difficult to use as a flavored coffee.
The market offers a plethora of Fair Trade Organic co-ops to choose from, without one in particular necessarily standing apart consistently from the rest. The microlots tend to be of much higher quality,although come at a much higher price.
