Natividad Benitez ~ Pacas from Santa Bárbara, Honduras
US$21.50
In stock
Producer: Natividad Benitez
Farm: El Ocotillo
Where: Santa Bárbara, Honduras
Variety: Pacas
Processing: Washed using concrete tanks
Exporter: Beneficio San Vicente
Harvest: May 2023
Tasting notes: raisins, black tea, pastry, tootsie roll
Sourced from friends, this Pacas lot was picked and processed by Natividad Benitez on his farm El Ocotillo in Santa Bárbara, Honduras. Fermented as a traditional washed process using concrete tanks for 24 hrs before being washed and dried. Roasted for filter. Sweet and comforting.
Variety
Pacas is a natural mutation from Bourbon where it grows smaller and more compact allowing harvesting to be a little easier and planting to be closer together than would be possible with Bourbon, much like the Caturra variety grown widely in Colombia. Introduced to Honduran coffee farmers by IHCAFE in 1974, the variety was first discovered on a farm in the Santa Ana region of El Salvador, owned by the Pacas family, in 1949.
Processing
First the coffee fruit is floated to both rinse it and remove any that float (if they float it means either there’s no coffee seed inside the parchment layer of the fruit, or there’s a lack of nutrient density). Then the fruit goes through a de-pulper, landing in a concrete tank. The fruit rests in a pile to ferment without water overnight. In the mid morning the coffee seeds are checked and if the mucilage is sufficiently metabolized and no longer sticky, then water is introduced to the tank to wash the parchment. Once that’s done, the coffee is moved to raised solar dryers to dry over a 1-2 week period, allowing for the moisture come down slowly to around 10-11%. The dried parchment is put in nylon bags and is delivered to the dry mill, where it will be stored until it’s pretty close to export time. The idea is to mill as close to the shipment time as possible to maximize shelf life of the resulting green coffee.
