Nicaraguan Org. SHB EP Jinotega – Finca El Pastoral – Honey Processed

Description

Very clean, sweet edged, lower acidity and fairly neutral tasting coffee. A wonderful daily drinker!

What’s the best way to support coffee producers? This is exactly the question Juan de Dios Castillo (the family’s agronomist) and his 4 siblings were looking to answer when they created J&M Family Coffee, a privately-owned export company named after their parents Juan and Miriam (J&M). Their first goal was to sell their parents’ coffee directly to international buyers. It was a way to honor their parents who started cultivating coffee during their childhood with the income from the first family business as tailors in the town of Jinotega.

With this first goal completed, Juan de Dios Castillo decided to take the next step and start his own farm called El Pastoral, which has 150 acres of coffee production. During the harvest, the coffee cherries are carefully harvested, sorted and then depulped, fermented, washed and pre-dried at the farm. The partially dried coffee is taken to a nearby location where drying is completed and the coffee is stored and later prepared for export. This is a truly integrated model, in which J&M Family Coffee ensures quality control and traceability from farm to export.

Tasting Notes: A wonderful cup from light to dark. Light roasts have a lot of sweetness upfront, just a hint of lemony citric and floral, which fades quickly on the tongue to a mellow nutty, slightly malty cup profile. Medium roasts taste a little thicker and hide that slight citric crispness of the lighter roasts, rich and smooth nutty/malty tones. Darker roasts retain the sweet, smooth and rich profile nicely, adding a little complimenting roasty and smoky tone to the cup.

Roasting Notes: Hard to pick a roast on this bean, we could see joy from light to dark. Good to get a little past first crack but from there, pick a roast level you normally enjoy. Roasts pretty even for a honey processed, in this case, the processing is closer to a washed processed than a natural. Hardly any fruity/ferment tones in the cup but will have a little higher chaff content.