Description
New 2024/25 Crop!
A wonderfully fresh & feel good project coffee. As well as a wonderful resurrection story. We have had some lovely Puerto Rican relationships in our history, one of our favorites being from Don (Guillermo) Cardona who owns Hacienda Las Nubes.
Unfortunately when the hurricane happened in 2017, everything dried up (not just coffee). It toppled the trees and infrastructure, which take some serious time to come back. We lost contact with Don Cardona (as well as our other buddy farmers) shortly after and have not seen PR coffee since. Low and behold, Don Cardona called us up last week. He had to pull 3000 coffee trees and replant, been working on it for the last three years. The fruits of his labor finally paid off this season! Hacienda Las Nubes coffee has risen again! 4 year old trees which is quite young but his land is fertile and in the perfect spot for high altitude coffee, beautiful beans for such young trees.
Everything about this coffee is hand done in small batches, from the picking to the processing. Cardona does a ton of it himself, hiring only friends and neighbors to help with the picking and sorting. He is a retired engineer and has developed custom processing and drying equipment that brings his coffee to the next level.
A decent screen of coffee but this offering is not sorted by size, nor color. A unique looking coffee for the specialty world. One will see larger and smaller beans, dark green to pretty pale green in color with more defects than traditional specialty coffee.
Tasting Notes: A cool cup from medium to dark. There are some sweet island floral tones upfront at the lighter roasts, a sweet edge with unique spice; somewhere between a woody cinnamon to more peppery/clove. Wonderful aromatics accompany lighter roasts but could be a little too grassy/sharp for some. Medium roasts are more chocolaty, balancing with the spice nicely, less woody, more bold semi-sweet clove like spice. Darker roasts get smooth and creamy retaining those exotic spice notes to compliment the roasty and smoky darker chocolate cup.
Roasting Notes: Fairly easy to roast and tasty from light to dark. Small batch picked and processed leaves the beans roasting a bit uneven. Low chaff and can take off a bit towards second crack, careful it can sneak up on you a bit, watch it close especially with higher temps.
sonoitaheritagecoffee (verified owner) –
This lot was fantastic, dropped @ 424, super smooth, beautiful rice looking roast, flavor was sweet, caramel, and a hint of light flowers, loved it
John House (verified owner) –
Very good tasting brew. My only problem with it is how fast it goes into 2nd crack. My first roast I did hot and fast and it started 2nd crack 10 or 15 sec. after the end of 1rst crack. The 2nd roast I tried slowing the roast down a bit and it started 2nd crack before 1rst crack even finished. It also gets oily very fast when storing it and is the first variety that bridged in my grinder so I had to tap it to get it into the burrs. It is still one of the best tasting coffees I’ve roasted. It gives Kona a run for its money in taste from my experience. It may take some time to get my roasting process working properly for the oils to take longer to come out.
John House (verified owner) –
Very good tasting brew. My only problem with it is how fast it goes into 2nd crack. My first
roast I did hot and fast and it started 2nd crack 10 or 15 sec. after the end of 1rst crack. The 2nd roast I tried slowing the roast down a bit and it started 2nd crack before 1rst crack even finished. It also gets oily very fast when storing it and is the first variety that bridged in my grinder so I had to tap it to get it into the burrs. It is still one of the best tasting coffees I’ve roasted. It gives Kona a run for its money in taste from my experience. It may take some time to get my roasting process working properly for the oils to take longer to come out.
Patrick M (verified owner) –
I’ve roasted three batches of this and enjoyed each roast level. The Full City+ makes a terrific espresso reminiscent of a semi-sweet Tollhouse chocolate chip. Full City was a creamy nutty and chocolatey cup. Perfect for an Aeopress. The City+ was my favorite for V60: full body but there is more nutty/chocolate factor and less bittersweet. This is a lower elevation bean so be careful: it will race to second crack. On the Behmor 1600+, I ran it Manual P5, double drum, for 5 minutes and then lowered to P4 until FC. At Fc, I dropped to P3