This is our third year buying from Piedras Amarillas. This is a 100% Pacas separation, and the strongest year yet from this rather interesting farm. This year the coffee is surprisingly complex. We taste lychee, blackberry, and orange blossom honey.
Pacas
Santa Bárbara
1,650 masl
June, 2020
Hand picked at peak ripeness. Floated to further remove defects. Depulped. Dry fermented for 24 hours. Washed. Dried on raised beds for 16 days.
Piedras Amarillas (yellow stones) gets its name from the abundance of yellow rocks scattered throughout this small 4-hectare (9.9 acre) plot. The farm is a communal project between three of the Moreno brothers: Mario, Danny, and Mabel, and consistently produces high quality Pacas, Bourbon, and Catuai coffees. The Morenos have been a cornerstone of coffee production in Santa Bárbara, dating back to their father, Daniel Moreno, who purchased his first farm in 1963.
Pacas is a natural mutation of Bourbon from the Bourbon/Typica group mainly found in El Salvador and Honduras. Similar to other Bourbon mutants, Pacas has a single-gene mutation that causes the plant to grow smaller (dwarfism). Unlike the hybrid varieties, Pacas is very susceptible to disease, making it riskier to grow.
The cost of getting a coffee from cherry to beverage varies enormously depending on its place of origin and the location of its consumption. The inclusion of price transparency is a starting point to inform broader conversation around the true costs of production and the sustainability of specialty coffee as a whole.