Colombia Las Brisas
$ 18.00
We love the balance of approachability and jaw-dropping flavors that great Colombian coffees can exhibit, and Las Brisas has been one of our favorite Colombians for the past few years running. A couple years ago we had the chance to visit the group, and we're looking forward to not just roasting this year's harvest, but also many harvests ahead. In this crop we taste bright pomegranate and citrus, balanced by sweet flavors of stone fruit and molasses. All of this makes this an exciting coffee for the nerds, and also a friendly coffee for less-seasoned specialty coffee drinkers, too.
Las Brisas is grown by growers in ASOQUEBRADON growers group, based around the town of Rioblanco, Tolima. This area sits near the juncture of Colombia's three mountain ranges, or cordilleras, and the name Las Brisas refers to the strong winds blowing through the region.
We roast quite a bit of coffee grown by small producers. Las Brisas and our other Colombian coffees are unique in that smallholder farmers mill, wash, and dry their coffee individually, at their farms, rather than at a centralized wet mill. Most of our other smallholder coffees, like Guatemala Atitlán el Grano, Ethiopia Wolichu Wachu, and our Kenyan coffees from Othaya, for example, are picked and delivered in its cherry to a centralized washing station, where it is processed collectively.
Individual processing can create challenges for consistency and quality, but luckily our export partner Caravela's regional team of Davier and Wilfer work together with the growers to improve farming and washing practices, to help ensure that the coffee is delicious. All of the farmers who make up Las Brisas are well-practiced in proper fermentation and washing, and dry their coffees on raised beds for slow, even drying and under cover for protection from Colombia's rains.
Las Brisas has sweetness that lovers of more basic, milk-friendly coffees will enjoy, but also packs a punch of stellar, fruity brightness and the juicy flavors that excite the roasting team here at Huckleberry!
And, if you're looking for something extra-special, peep the Gesha release from Israel Hernandez, one of the farmers behind Las Brisas.
*** for roasting schedule, shipping, receiving & additional information, please visit out Frequently Asked Questions ***
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Colombia Israel Hernandez GESHA
$ 25.00
Bright, floral, complex and delicious, Israel Hernandez Gesha returns to Huck just in time for the holidays!
Huckleberry Roasters invests in people. We value longterm growing partners just as much as we value truly special coffee. So, for Huck, it's important that our Gesha offerings reflect both of those values. We have been sourcing Las Brisas from the town of Rioblanco in Tolima, Colombia since 2014, and tasted Israel Hernandez's very first harvest of Gesha during an origin trip in 2017. This is our second year roasting this delicious, floral coffee from Israel.
Israel Hernandez has been farming since 2005, and purchased his first Gesha trees in 2016. When we tasted his coffee at Caravela's Rioblanco warehouse on our visit three summers ago, we were floored by the coffee's florality and clean tropical flavors. It stood out not just among the more traditional varieties (which were clean and delicious, too!), but also stood head and shoulders over a few other Geshas.
After our first dive into roasting Israel's Gesha last year, we're stoked on year two. This crop might be even more tasty than the last, bursting with lemon-lime candy, fruit loops, and florals - delicate, limited, complex, and delicious!
Obsesso Processo Design helped us make this coffee truly stand out, designing an 8 oz retail jar that pops just as hard as the coffee in the cup. Featuring bright green colors and a playful homage to the coffee supply chain - from farmer to barista, and Israel himself - it's coffee that looks as good as we think it tastes.
COTM: Ethiopia Tilahun Natural
$ 19.50 $ 21.00
Our last Ethiopian natural from the 2019 harvest is our first coffee of the month fro 2020!
We’re rounding out our 2019 harvest Ethiopia naturals with something unique: a single farm microlot from coffee farmer Tilahun Gedo. Tilahun’s coffee is the jam for the fruit-forward coffee lover: we taste raspberry candy, hibiscus florality, and sweet honey.
Most of our Ethiopian coffees come from cooperatives or privately-owned washing stations that collect coffee from many smallholder farmers. Until recently, the only other option were large estates, primarily in Western Ethiopia. Thanks to some changes in Ethiopian coffee laws, medium-size farmers are now able to export their own coffee, and we’re starting to see more of these farmers singled out.
In this case, Tilahun Gedo and his family own a farm in the kebele of Jemijemo, a small village in the Yirgacheffe area. They focus on natural-processed coffees, producing around 90x60 kilogram bags of their best quality, and Huckleberry is lucky enough to roast 20 of those.
For those unfamiliar with coffee processing, naturals are coffee seeds (beans) that are dried inside the cherry. Most of the coffees we drink have that fruit removed before drying. In the case of the best naturals, like this one, that in-fruit drying gives the coffee a particularly fruity character.
Tilahun’s our final Ethiopian natural until the 2020 harvest arrives in the late spring or early summer, and we saved one of the best for last. Clean, bright, floral, delicious, and of course, berry-forward.
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Ethiopia Aramo
$ 19.00
*** for roasting schedule, shipping, receiving & additional information, please visit out Frequently Asked Questions ***
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Guatemala Miel de Oro Black Honey
$ 20.00
This is our third year roasting this sweet, creamy coffee from Acatenango, and we’re stoked to have Mario Alarcon’s black honey process back in the Huckleberry quiver. While the bulk of our Guatemalan coffee and our efforts in the country will remain centered around the smaller-scale growers in AProCafé, we’ve never closed off the idea of other Guatemalan coffees, especially with a personal connection.
Our coffee buyer Kevin’s friend Frosty (or Cristian, but he’s pale by Guatemalan standards and that’s what everyone calls him) introduced us to Mario Alarcón and Christian Starry, two slightly larger-scale growers in the Acatenango region who banded together with other growers in the region to export their own coffee under the name Truth Trading Company. When we first tasted coffee together, Mario’s coffee stood out, and that excitement holds true for year three.
This honey-processed coffee is picked ripe, like any other coffee in our lineup, but falls somewhere between a washed coffee and a natural. Washed coffees are depulped of their cherry skin, then have all the additional sticky fruity material (honey or mucilage) washed off prior to drying. Naturals are dried with the fruit intact. Honeys are depulped, but dried with varying levels of that mucilage still on the bean. White honeys dry with very little mucilage, black honeys dry with the most.
Mario takes the basics several steps further. He uses a brix meter to decide when to pick his coffee (22 Brix), then before depulping, keeps his coffee in its cherry for a day or two of anaerobic fermentation. Then he depulps his coffee, leaving a large amount of mucilage intact, and dries slowly on raised beds over the course of 2-3 weeks. With its in-cherry fermentation, Miel de Oro almost straddles the line between honey and full natural, and we have a feeling that’s part of the reason it’s a standout.
All said and done, we’re here to roast you coffee that tastes good and tastes interesting, and we’re pretty happy that Frosty put Miel de Oro in our playlist. This is a full-bodied, creamy, and deeply sweet coffee that will stand up great to milk and work great as an espresso. It also packs plenty of complexity, without the intensity of some full naturals and a tad less brightness than some full washed coffees. On the bag we say cashew butter, grape jelly, and creamy milk chocolate. If you’re looking for a coffee with complexity but mellower acidity and full sweetness, Miel de Oro might be your pot of gold.
*** for roasting schedule, shipping, receiving & additional information, please visit out Frequently Asked Questions ***
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