Story
Benjamin Paz is a coffee producer, roaster, and exporter in Santa Barbara, Honduras. Outside of running his own successful coffee farm (He placed 1st in the Honduras Cup of Excellence last year) and roasting program, he is also the liaison for the greater Santa Barbara region through his mill and exporting company San Vicente. Benjamin manages hundreds of relationships with the producer group in Santa Barbara, connecting each with a roasting partner who can grow with each coffee producer they’re partnered with. A true legend of the industry, Benjamin does it all with a smile on his face and a deep love for coffee and the people that grow it.
Through Ben and San Vicente, we’ve established a sourcing program over the years with almost a dozen coffee producers in the area. This particular lot comes directly from a farm that Benjamin owns in El Cedral. Outside of his award-winning farm La Salsa, he cultivates a handful of other farms, many of which we purchase from. This farm, El Brujo, produces Parainema. He's planted this, favoring Parainema for it's resistance to disease as well as it's high yield. Benjamin's coffees from El Brujo are characterized by his long anaerobic washed processing, where he allows up to 48 hours of in-cherry fermentation in a sealed tank. This long fermentation imparts a heavy tactile and complex fruit note within the seed.
WASHED PROCESSED COFFEES
Processing in coffee refers to the conversion of the raw coffee cherry into green coffee, a finished product for roasters to manipulate. Washed coffee can also be known as “wet-processed.” It refers to the removal of the fruit that covers the seeds before they are laid to dry. To do this, coffee cherries are then squeezed through a screen called a pulper. The fruit/skin travels down one shoot, while the coffee beans go into a large tank. The seeds at this point still are covered in a sticky, mucilage-like substance. (think the stringy fruit left on a peach pit) From here, the coffee goes through a 12-36-hour fermentation. This step is a delicate time in processing where bacteria are eating and converting the mucilage and changing the flavor of the coffee. If this fermentation happens for too long and the coffee becomes vinegary, too little, and you end up drying coffee with mucilage semi-intact. The coffee is washed several times to remove any remaining mucilage that is left. Once free of the fruit, the coffee then moves on to the drying phase, be it patio or raised bed.
