Grown in the hills around Lake Ayarza in southern Guatemala, this coffee is naturally sweet and easy to enjoy. You will taste soft marshmallow sweetness, crisp red apple, and a gentle cinnamon warmth that makes every cup feel comforting and familiar.
It is a lovely, balanced coffee, smooth, sweet, and perfect for any time of day.
Tasting notes: Marshmallow · Red Apple · Cinnamon
Roast Level: Medium
Body: Medium & smooth
Processing: Washed
Variety: Anacafe 14, Bourbon, Catuai, Pache, San Ramon
Origin: Guatemala
Subregion: Lake Ayarza, Santa Rosa
Producer Type: Small Holder Farmers
Growing Altitude: 1400m - 2000m
About This Coffee
This washed lot was processed at our cherry mill in Ayarza, Santa Rosa. In Guatemala, coffee is traditionally processed individually by smallholder farmers, making it difficult to manage and guarantee quality form lot to lot. Our team in Ayarza works with numerous farmers in the region, paying a premium for ripe cherry and processing it centrally to maintain strict standards throughout.
Francisco Nájera is one of many local producers we work with at Ayarza cherry mill. Francisco was born in El Naranjo town in the Jutiapa department of Guatemala. He is 30 years old, married with two children and has been working in the coffee production business for around 15 years. Cultivating various small plots covering just under 1ha in total, Francisco is a small producer but a great entrepreneur, and has excelled in the coffee production business despite the adversity and constant threat of various coffee diseases. He also dedicates part of his time to developing coffee tree nursery services to sell saplings to other farmers in the region.
The Process
The Ayarza washed process is a hybrid of traditional washed processing with mechanical demucilage processing. After years of refinement, we have found this to offer a 'best of both worlds' scenario, here's why:
Mechanical demucilagers use a fraction of the water of traditional washed processing. This has a number of benefits, not least a significant reduction in environmental footprint from water usage and the production of waste water. Waste water from washed coffee processing is a challenging byproduct of any facility producing washed coffee, anywhere in the world. Waste water is contaminated with organic pollutants which can wreak havoc on ecosystems if released into local rivers, so the water is either treated to remove these pollutants (a costly process), or it is pooled into seepage pits which, while preferable to polluting local rivers, is not a scalable long term solution to the problem.
A potential downside of the demucilage process is that it skips fermentation altogether. Without a need to ferment coffee to break down its sugary mucilage for washing, a functional approach would consider fermentation redundant. But fermentation in washed processing does more than allow for the enzymatic breakdown of mucilage, it also adds flavour and character to the final cup.
So, after numerous tests and tweaks, we include a 4-6 hour fermentation followed by mechanical demucilaging. This allows for a welcome extra hint of fruit in the cup profile, whilst retaining the eco-benefits of mechanical washing.
