Ecuador El Sauce
$ 22.00
Are you feeling saucy? Ready to get sauced? As long as you’re okay with a 0% ABV, we’ve got you covered with Ecuador El Sauce.
To be clear, this technically should be pronounced sauce-eh (or something like that, we’re coffee roasters, not phonetic spellers), and in Spanish, “el sauce” translates to willow tree. It’s also the name of a town in Southern Ecuador, the source of this delicious coffee.
We’ve roasted coffees from Ecuador’s Loja Province in the past, but El Sauce is new to Huck, and it’s a different animal entirely. There’s plenty of the maple syrup and molasses sweetness we’d expect from this area of Ecuador, but thanks to a bit of experimental processing mixed in with the traditional washed process, we’re tasting fig and freeze-dried berries here, with some tangy brightness to boot.
El Sauce is a blend of coffees from smallholder farmers in the town of El Sauce, and we found this coffee through The Coffee Quest, an import-export operation based in Medellin, Colombia and Austin, Texas, but partnered with Capamaco Trading in Ecuador. Some of the farmers in El Sauce have begun experimenting with yeast-inoculated fermentations, using yeast to both alter and control the fermentation step that breaks down the coffee’s fruit in the traditional washed process.
Stephen at The Coffee Quest estimates that roughly 15% of El Sauce was yeast-fermented. We’ve tasted yeast fermentations that range from overwhelming to more subtle, but here, with this group of farmers and as part of the blend, the result is a tangy, but balanced cup.
Fig jam, molasses, brown sugar, and freeze-dried strawberries make for some very interesting sauce, that until now, we really didn’t expect out of Ecuador. It’s a pretty good reason to get Sauced with us, even if you are doing it first thing in the morning.
*** For roasting schedule, shipping, receiving & additional information, please visit out Frequently Asked Questions . And, for a primer on coffee processing, check out our Processing Basics Guide. ***
Photo courtesy The Coffee Quest
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Special Release: Peru La Miel Natural Gesha
$ 28.00
We like to think that all of our Peruvian coffees are special, from the La Higuera community lot we use in our espresso blends to the single farm microlots from the Peralta, Nayra-Ramos and Fernandez-Silva families we'll feature on their own. But this coffee's a little bit extra.
We love working with Origin Coffee Lab in Northern Peru, and each year we dig in a bit deeper, both to make sure we're a better buyer for their supply network and to make sure that we get to roast even better coffee for y'all. And this year, beyond expanding and improving our usual sourcing, we wanted to highlight something especially mind-blowing. Enter La Miel Natural Gesha.
First off, this coffee is a Gesha - the same variety we feature each year from Israel Hernandez in Colombia and the winner of many, many coffee competitions over the past few decades. Indigenous to Ethiopia, but spread throughout Latin America over the past 20 years, when well-cultivated in the right conditions and well-processed, Gesha has a well-earned reputation for its distinct, intensely floral and nuanced flavors.
But it's not just the variety doing all the work, and as more and farmers plant Geshas throughout the world, in different conditions and with different levels of care, it's becoming clear that not all Geshas are equally-spectacular, and the humans behind the coffee play just as great a role as the variety.
Yulisa Carahuallocllo and her farm, Finca La Miel in Chirinos, Peru, are the force behind this coffee. Yulisa grew up in coffee, learning from her father, Efrain, a well-known farmer in his own right. And Yulisa further cut her teeth as a quality control cupper in Origin Coffee Lab's Jaen central office and Chirinos purchasing station, tasting through the good, less-good, and tremendous, and gaining insight on how to produce the best-tasting coffee along the way. Once she decided to return to farming, she named her farm Finca La Miel, after the ground-dwelling bees and the honey (miel) they produce amongst the coffee trees. The farm sits at a sky-high 1870 meters above sea level, and Yulisa has planted a mix of traditional varieties like caturra, alongside small amounts of Gesha to diversify the goods coming out of La Miel.
Yulisa chose to process some of her Gesha using the natural process, drying the coffee in its cherry rather than washing off the fruit before drying, to boost the fruity flavors in the coffee. And after experimenting in prior harvests, has settled on a relatively-short, 18 hour cherry fermentation before drying, to boost the coffee's complexity, without creating overwhelmingly winey notes that can accompany some very-long fermentations.
Yulisa's dedication and process, well-cultivated Gesha, and the terroir of Finca La Miel combine for an absolute stunner. We're tasting sweet tart candy and fruit punch front and center, plus perfumey and floral, but lightly boozey liqueur that we're guessing is the 1-2 punch of Gesha and Yulisa's take on the natural process. Regardless of the true mix behind the goodness, the coffee is just amazing, and we're very excited to roast and brew something a little bit different from Peru!
*** For roasting schedule, shipping, receiving & additional information, please visit out Frequently Asked Questions . And, for a primer on coffee processing, check out our Processing Basics Guide. ***
Photo: Yulisa Carahuallocllo at Finca La Miel, courtesy Origin Coffee Lab
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East Timor Eratoi
$ 20.00
It’s been a minute, but we’re excited to have coffee from East Timor's Letefoho district and Cafe Brisa Serena back at Huck!
Coffees from the Pacific islands can be round and sweet, but the wet hulled process that’s common in the region - in which the coffee’s protective parchment layer is removed before drying - lends itself to premature fade and vegetal, funky flavors. So, we specifically seek out washed coffees from the islands, dried in their parchment to preserve the goodness and keep out the funk. The tiny country of East Timor has been on the comeup the past few years, in large part by focusing on fully washed coffees.
Cafe Brisa Serena is a social enterprise that works with farmers in East Timor's Letefoho district to improve growing and processing practices, obtain organic certification, and access the specialty market. This particular coffee comes from 15 organic-certified family farms in the tiny village of Ducurai that have organized themselves into a group called Eratoi, and is all washed on-farm, rather than at a centralized mill. Eratoi translates to water spring, and the group has named itself after a waterfall near the village.
While this coffee does come from a different part of the world, it has quite a bit in common with a subtle, but nuanced washed coffee from Latin America. So if you’ve liked Huck coffees like Productores Cafénor from El Salvador or Atitlán Aprocafé from Guatemala, this could be your jam. We’re tasting pleasant toasted almond, a subtly-spicy cinnamon, buttery pastry, and just a hint of red apple-like fruitiness. Eratoi’s an approachable everyday drinker, and we’re glad to have East Timor back on the menu for 2024!
*** For roasting schedule, shipping, receiving & additional information, please visit out Frequently Asked Questions . And, for a primer on coffee processing, check out our Processing Basics Guide. ***
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Rwanda Ruli
$ 23.00
Late winter into spring is a time for Southern Hemisphere coffees to shine, and we're stoked to kick off Southern Hemisphere Africas with Ruli!
Dukundekawa Musasa is one of the larger cooperatives in Rwanda, and they group their producers into smaller cells. The Ruli cell also has yet another sub-group, the Rambagirakawa women’s group, made up of quality-driven female members of the cooperative. Beyond coffee, the group focuses on helping its members attain higher pricing, and re-invests its premiums into women’s health and education initiatives, agronomy support, and microcredit loans for its members. While our much smaller natural lot comes from a co-ed group of farmers, this washed coffee was grown exclusively by the Rambagirakawa group.
One of the reasons we love Rwandan coffee is that the country is planted almost entirely in Bourbon, a coffee variety that lends a deep, sugary, syrupy sweetness. Variety, rich red clay soil, meticulous picking and sorting, and careful processing all work together to layer that sweetness with sparkling acidity complexity.
Ruli brings a combination of fruit-driven acidity and deep sweetness to the lineup. We're tasting cranberry, shortbread cookies, meyer lemon, and apricot in this years’ crop! We’ll also have a tiny amount of natural Ruli, coming soon, but exclusive to Huckleberry’s cafes and webstore.
*** For roasting schedule, shipping, receiving & additional information, please visit out Frequently Asked Questions . And, for a primer on coffee processing, check out our Processing Basics Guide. ***
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