🇪🇨 Juan Peña

The counterpoint to the Pichincha lot: same country, no fermentation tricks at all. Juan Peña picks ripe, pulps promptly, ferments in open tanks, and dries on raised beds. It’s the process almost everyone used before anaerobic tanks became fashionable, executed carefully.

Saraguro

Saraguro sits in Loja province near the Peruvian border, an Indigenous Kichwa highland region better known for textiles than for coffee. Farms are small and high, and coffee is generally one crop among several rather than a monoculture.

There’s no story here about novel processing, because there isn’t one. The interest is that traditional washed processing done properly still produces a very good cup, and it’s worth having a coffee on the roster that demonstrates that.

What it tastes like

Caramel sweetness, cocoa, and a clear citrus brightness at the top. Medium body, clean finish, nothing unexpected anywhere in it. Held next to the anaerobic lot from Pichincha it tastes almost plain. That’s the useful comparison, because it shows exactly how much of that coffee’s character came from the tank rather than the tree.

How we roast it

Medium. A conventional profile for a conventional coffee, and it takes it well.

Brewing it

Everyday coffee, no special handling. It’s particularly good in a Chemex, where the thicker filter suits the clean profile and there’s enough sweetness to survive the slower brew.