Costa Rica Tarrazu Coffee Honey Gesha
$27.00 – $150.00
We taste Blackberry, Peanut butter, and a refreshing Tropical Acidity.
Expect an adventure. Wild, punchy flavors accompany a silky feel.
Costa Rica Tarrazu Coffee. Coffee Costa Rican Tarrazu. Honey process coffee. Honey processed coffee.
Costa Rica Tarrazu Coffee at it’s Finest
This honey process coffee is wild. It has an outstanding nutty, fruity sweetness and an effervescent acidity. It evokes childhood memories of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Hawaiian punch by the pool in the summertime. Purple grape bubblegum. Honeysuckle flowers.
This Gesha is a vivacious pour over with plenty of sweetness or acidity to accentuate depending on your recipe. Long blooms and high volume pulse pours on the V60 brought out acidity reminiscent of green apple, candied citrus peel, and sweet Lambrusco. Short blooms and quick pulses gave us sticky sweet berries and rich, syrupy chocolate tones. Always leguminous and nougaty underneath.
We’ve had a lot of fun cold brewing this for an exotic nitro. It’s been a blast surprising friends and family with it this summer. Everyone has fun trying to guess what it was in the brew. An empty keg every time.
It’s almost too over the top as a single origin espresso. Some of us loved it and some hated it. It’s definitely worth a try if you’re a fan of pouring your espresso into a tonic water or seltzer, but get ready for an in-your-face profile, especially if your drinking it straight.
About Costa Rica Tarrazu Coffee
Tarrazu is known colloquially as “Los Santos” because the cantons there are named for different saints. Coffee is the main source of income there where altitudes can reach up to 2000 masl. Tarrazu sports a population of 10,000 people during the wet season which is also the coffee growing season.
Experimental process coffees like this one are relatively rare from this region as the climate is typically cool and humid making anaerobic, natural and honey type processing difficult to accomplish. Tarrazu’s features include the Talamanca Sierra mountains and the Pirris River.
This is a coffee unlike other Costa Rica coffees because it has red berries, nut butters, and stewed fruit flavors in the cup. We relish the unique sensation of it all coming together in this long lasting palate. What a rare and exceptional treat.
Honey Process Coffee
After they pick these ripe coffee cherries they take them to a wet mill to remove the seeds inside from the fruit.
The seeds inside the cherry will go through a number of steps to clean, ferment, and dry them before they become coffee beans that can be roasted and brewed. On the outside of the seeds remains a gooey mucilage, cherry juice. Rinsing off the juice is how washed process coffees begin. Placing the juice covered seeds in fermentation tanks is how anaerobic process coffee begins.
But if the farmer bypasses the tanks and the rinsing we end up with a honey processed coffee.
Pulped-natural, semi-washed, and honey coffees are all processed basically the same. Some variations in methodology and equipment take place, but the terms are used interchangeably in most cases.
We try to indicate any major differences when they exist by adding a prefix to the process. For instance our current offering of “macerated honey” from Colombia which spends some time in a maceration tank fermenting before the pulp covered seeds are set to dry.
- Firstly, farmers pick cherries for this honey processed coffee at their ripest possible point. Likewise, this guarantees they have a high sugar content. The sugars feed the fermentation process.
- Secondly, they sun dry the seeds coated with the juice (mucilage) from the cherry on raised African beds and patios.
- Finally, after 20-30 days the coffee is cleaned and sorted again before being shipped out to roast.
This innovative process gives the coffee an exceptional flavor and aroma that complements the palate that Costa Rica Tarrazu coffee is already famous for.
Costa Rican Tarrazu Coffee. Coffee Costa Rican Tarrazu. Honey process coffee. Honey processed coffee.
Where Honey Processed Coffee Came From
In the 90’s, Brazilian farmers were trying to create a coffee processing method that conserved water like dry/natural processing does. However, they still wanted the nutty, clean flavor profile of a wash process.
They call it “cereza descascado” which means de-husked cherry in Portuguese. This indicates that they remove the skin of the cherry but not all of the pulp or fruit before drying. This became known as “pulped natural” in English.
Next, in Brazil other Latin countries “semi-lavado” or semi-wash processes begin. It is essentially the same as pulped-natural but sometimes with a small amount of washing before drying. The term semi-washed is rarely used now in English. Pulped-natural is usually only used to describe Brazilian coffees. Everything else is almost always referred to as honey.
Different colors can be a prefix of honey. This typically describes the amount of fruit left on the seed while it dries. Firstly, black is the most. Secondly, red. Thirdly, yellow. Lastly, white honey has the least.
About the Coffee Farmer
Luis Fernando Prado is part of the new innovative atmosphere of Costa Rican coffee. Over the last decade the country has pivoted to embrace the specialty market without sacrificing large scale quality and consistency. There has been a micro mill renaissance following an increase in the cost of production and a plague of rust leaf disease that burdened many farmers.
A parallel infrastructure of large mills that uniformly process thousands of kilos operate alongside micro mills that process specialty lots one by one to preserve unique and distinctive profiles. All of Luis’ crops are processed in the latter method at the Cerro Dragon micro mill. He is dedicated to producing high grade coffees that meet a specialty standard.
His techniques are gathered from the best agronomists in the Cedral area in Tarrazu where his farm is located. We are delighted to offer this one-of-a-kind bean to showcase a masterfully produced honey process coffee of a rare varietal. Hard work and dedication pays off.
For more experimentally processed coffees check out our Hacienda La Papaya Oak Barrel Sidra