Paradise Coffee Roasters – El Salvador Santa Marta Honey Process

Tasting Notes:

Ripe blueberries and fresh honey with vanilla and almond in the aroma. Immensly complex, with flavors of honey, cherry, red wine and brown sugar in the cup. Bright, snappy acidity and a buttery body round out a well balanced cup.

Accolades:

“Intricately sweet, delicately complex. Ripe strawberry, orange, candied nut, vanilla-toned flowers in aroma and cup. Gently crisp acidity; light but smoothly silky mouthfeel. Very sweet, lightly flavor-saturated finish.” Ken Davids, Coffee Review 2013

94 Points on Coffee Review, Mar. 2013

Background Info:

From the Santa Marta farm in the San Miguel region of El Salvador comes another gem from Bodhi Leaf Coffee Traders. We cupped quite a few El Salvador’s to finally land on this complex and unique honey process coffee. “Honeyed” coffees are dried with some or all of the coffee pulp on the bean. It’s a processing method that falls somewhere between natural and washed processing. The dried-on pulp really enhances the sweetnes and the body of the coffee, even giving it a honey-like flavor, and gives the cup more of a champagne-like acidity.

Though this is a light roast, the beans may appear a bit darker than what you’re used to seeing from a light roast. The pulpy sugars on the outside of the bean are exposed to high heat during the roast process which causes them to caramelize on the outside. thus giving the bean a brownish hue darker than what you would normally see on a light roast.