El Salvador Natural Los Andes

This is a single varietal Bourbon coffee from El Salvador, and not just that, but it is the Pink Bourbon varietal which is incredibly difficult to grow. When it ripens, the cherries are pink instead of red! It is a cross between Red Bourbon and Yellow Bourbon and has to be cultivated on site, only able to be produced by creating a hybrid of the two, and planting the seeds.

El Salvador grows a lot of bourbon coffee, and it is not as disease resistant or high yielding as modern varietals, but it does seem to grow well in El Salvador. Los Andes Estate is surrounded by National Park with a microclimate that allows beautiful and rare flowers, animals, plants, and ancient dense forest. Most of their crop is washed process, but they harvested 400 pounds of Pink Bourbon and sundried it using traditional natural dry process techniques to bring out the fruit and sweetness.

Natural coffees from Central America tend to be creamy with fruity and sweet qualities to it. This one has slight cherry notes to it, but it also has a molasses sweetness, almost a gingerbread flavor, along with a creamy and nutty flavor. It's unusual, but we aren't complaining!

Our first couple roasts of this were too dark, covering up the sweetness and fruity flavors. You actually want to roast it about like a natural Ethiopia and end the roast almost immediately out of the 1st cracks.

US Arrival: August 2018