Dominican Org. Ramirez Estate – Washed Peaberry

Description

Peaberries are rounded, slightly denser beans. About 1 in 40 coffee cherries will contain a peaberry instead of your normal two flat beans. Lacking another bean to grow up against in the coffee cherry is what makes the peaberry. Every coffee has peaberries, sometimes they are sorted out for their own offerings (like this one), other times they are left in with the other beans and one will see them randomly in offerings. Generally they will taste fairly similar to the flat bean offerings.

In 1943, Mr. Belarminio Ramirez started a small company dedicated to the cultivation and marketing of coffee, which over the years grew into a family tradition involving three generations already. The Belarminio Ramirez Group was named in his honor. Currently, the company owns 350 hectares of coffee production, located in the mountains of the central range between 800 and 1500 meters above sea.

This family-owned estate is extraordinarily socially conscious. They use fermented coffee cherries to create natural gas, which partially powers their operation. They also donate books and computers to the local schools, and in a more rural area, they built and funded a new school preventing small children from having to walk over 15 km each way to class. They also help Haitians obtain legal residence in the Dominican Republic, in order to receive fair wages. We pay roughly 300% higher wages to this Estate for their exceptional care of the environment, organic certification, care for local Haitian immigrants, and high cupping scores.

This coffee comes from a single estate in the Jarabacoa region of the Dominican Republic. The Ramirez Estate employs over 400 people. 40 percent of the workers are female and many of them are Haitian migrant workers. They are paid roughly 300 percent higher wages than Fair Trade to the Estate and they use a decent portion of their profits to create sustainable gas recycling (to reduce emissions), water filtration (to prevent river contamination), and to donate computers and books to many of the local schools. This estate is an example of how a coffee businesses that becomes successful should operate in their community.

Tasting Notes:
Similar to the flat beans, it is a great medium to dark roast coffee: robust, even fuller bodied, lower acidity and complex. Rich and smooth with nutty, chocolate, earth, and spice tones. On the lighter roast spectrum there is a little jazzy citric note that presents the cup a little sweeter, on the darker roast spectrums it will have some roasty and smoky notes that we found quite pleasant.

Roasting Notes:
Make sure to play around with the roast on this guy, light to dark a tasty cup but pretty different. Lighter roasts you get sweet and delicate, dark you get strong and complex. A nice medium roast is where we settled on being our favorite, definitely a bean everyone can love but likely at slightly different roasts.

This is a project coffee from Cafe Kreyol, our buddy Joey has been working with Ramirez Estates on premium chops and awesome processing methods to ensure a premium and unique product. Cafe Kreyol goes into some of the most impoverished and troubled areas that are within prime coffee growing territory, organizes farmers, teaches how to correctly process beans, guarantees purchase of the beans at way above market prices ensuring it goes directly to the farmers and strives to really turn around some of the more troubled areas, putting people to work at well above average wages and ensuring future livelihoods.

Joey, the head of Cafe Kreyol, even strives for his US employees the above statement. He finds the hardest working individuals with great work ethics that for one reason or another have really been put down with employment and troubled times to help them recover and build a resume while also being able to help others.

One can feel really good about supporting any of Cafe Kreyol’s projects and for the most part – really tasty coffees as well.