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Product Info
About the Roast
Roast will be sent out within a week of roasting. Next roast is the coming weekend (cut off on Friday 6pm) and will be sent out the following week's Monday. *Check our homepage for exact next roast date!
Aquiares, one of Costa Rica’s largest and most historic coffee farms, sits high on the fertile slopes of Turrialba Volcano. Producing coffee continuously for over a century, the farm has developed an enduring model for growing high-quality Arabica coffee, protecting a stunning natural setting, and supporting a thriving local community of 1,800 people.
Microlots, such as this one, are picked by a special team of skilled harvesters who are paid well above the daily rate for their exceptional skill in picking the ripest cherries at each pass. Each tree is visited up to seven times during the harvest to ensure that only fully red ripe cherries are picked.
We found that for these beans, the optimal filter / espresso roast profiles are very similar, and so we created this profile which can be brewed both ways and still tastes great!
Please note that the 500g / 1kg packaging comes in a white resealable valved bag.
Roasted for: Filter & Espresso
Body: Light-Medium/ Medium
Roast level: Light-Medium
Tasting notes
On Espresso - Cacao, Molasses, Candied Orange
On White - Milk Chocolate, Candied Orange
On Black - Red Currants, Molasses, Floral Tea, Candied Orange
On Filter - Red Currants, Floral Tea, Candied OrangeAbout the beans
Owner: Robelo Family
Region: Turrialba
Varietal: Esperanza
Process: Red Honey
Altitude: 1200 - 1400 maslAs coffee cherries come from the field the same day that they are picked, they move into Aquiares’ wet mill. The farm produces fully washed coffees, honey processed coffees and naturals. This Red honey lot was produced by leaving approximately 80-90% of the mucilage attached after pulping. This is done by first washing and floating the cherries to remove the low-density beans, before de-pulping using a traditional “chancador” method. After this, the coffee is delivered to the mill’s covered greenhouses to pre-dry on concrete patios for two days before being moved to the mill’s raised beds to dry for an additional 10 days. Here, temperature control is very important to allow for even drying, therefore the raised beds are maintained between 28.C and 45.C. Finally, the almost dried honey’d coffee is placed in a mechanical dryer or ‘Guardiola’, for one day to complete the process.
The Robelos sourced a greenhouse from a neighbour in the region. In order to create a constant and even temperature in the greenhouse they installed an airflow system connected to their guadiola system (used for commercial lots). Now, dry air of around 36.C circulates throughout the greenhouse, maintaining an even temperature. The new system works well, helps increase the drying capacity of the greenhouse and reduces variability in lots.
EsperanzaThis lot is 100% ‘Esperanza’ variety – a hybrid of Caturra and the Ethiopia 531 variety, developed by various Central American coffee research institutes. Esperanza marries high cup quality with high resistance to disease – particularly the ojo de gallo fungus. Aquiares has found the variety very well-suited to the farm’s high elevation (grown above 1,200 meters in most cases) and as consistently yielding a quality cup. The variety’s fruity profile lends itself well to honey and natural processing, which is why the Robelos decided on processing this small lot using the Red Honey method.
About the Farm
Nestled between the Aquiares and Turrialba Rivers, “Aquiares” means “land between rivers” in Costa Rica’s Huetar indigenous language. The region where the farm is located used to be the centre for this pre-Columbian civilization, and occasionally old artefacts are found among the coffee trees.
Aquiares is strongly committed to, and has become an international leader in, environmental sustainability. The farm has long seen the connection between agricultural, environmental, and social health. By planting more than 50,000 shade trees, creating natural buffers around streams and water springs, preserving the river valleys as forest, planting along the contour, implementing integrated pest management systems and many other steps, Aquiares has demonstrated how to make ecological ideals a reality. Its stringent environmental stewardship enabled the farm to achieve Rainforest Alliance Certification in 2003.
In 2012, Aquiares became the first farm in Costa Rica to fulfil the requirements of the Rainforest Alliance Climate Module. This requires adhering to careful standards of greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, which are carefully tracked through each harvest season. This certification demonstrates that the farm’s low emissions do not meaningfully contribute to climate change. Not only that, but the farm is 100% carbon neutral, and actually carbon negative. The trees that have been planted and the reduced usage of chemical fertilizers has helped sequester carbon into the soil, more carbon than the farm actually produces.