Costa Rica La Pastora African Washed

This is from the famous La Pastora estate in the Tarrazu region and is a microlot of their African Washed process coffee. This bourbon varietal bean was washed in the Kenyan style -- first it was flushed with water and then soaked a second time to sort out the low density beans. Then they are sent through a water channel to scrub them clean and soaked for 24 hours in a tank. Then they are sundried at very little depth for 6 hours with the parchment on. Then they are taken to patios and dried with a lot of depth for up to two weeks until they are down to 12% moisture. It is a complicated, expensive and labor intensive way to process coffee, but Kenyan coffee is some of the most complex and sweetest washed coffee in the world when they're done.

It is uncommon to get an African Washed processed coffee out of Central America, which usually only exports washed process beans. La Pastora processes the same bean 5 different ways. This is a great education in how processing effects the taste of the coffee.

This bean takes more heat than the natural and honey coffees -- don't let it stall out. Roast it like a Kenya. Give it a few more degrees at the end than you do the honey and natural processed beans but a few degrees less than the typical washed lot. You'll get a juicy/winey Kenya-like bean, but instead of a grapefruit and blackberry taste that a Kenya would tend to have, you get a stonefruit, plum, and wild cherry taste similar to the taste profile of the other Costa Ricans.

If you like darker-roast coffees, this is the only one of the Costa Rican lots that holds up well to dark roasts. Instead of burning, it just smooths out and gets a deeper darker flavor. At 2nd cracks you have a sweet medium roast. Go into the 2nd cracks and you have a sweet french roast.

USA Arrival: August 2024