Close view of light-medium roasted beans, pale brown with an open centre line

Beans turning in the cooling tray under the steel stirring arm

Two ceramic cups and a glass server of filter coffee on the café counter

Chalatenango, El Salvador

La Ilusión

4.9 · 1,284 reviews

Red apple
Demerara
Almond

The everyday one. A honey-process Salvadoran with apple sweetness and a round, nutty body — works in every brewer you own.

250 g bag

£12.40

£10.54 on subscription

1 kg bag

£42.00

£35.70 on subscription

Subscribe and save 15% Buy a single bag

Roasted Tuesday and Thursday · posted the same afternoon

How we brew it

Cafetière: 30 g coffee to 500 ml water, coarse, 4 minutes
Moka pot: Fill the basket level, fine-medium grind, water just below the valve

Where it comes from

Origin: Chalatenango, El Salvador
Producer: A single farm of 14 hectares, third generation, 2,100 trees
Altitude: 1,420–1,510 m
Variety: Pacas, Bourbon
Process: Honey
Roast: Medium
Harvest: Picked December to February, landed in May

Delivery and freshness

Roasted to order and posted by Royal Mail Tracked 48 on the day it leaves the drum. Free on subscriptions and orders over £30, otherwise £3.95. Best from five days to six weeks after the roast date on the bag.

Why we buy La Ilusión

Honey process leaves some of the fruit’s sticky mucilage on the seed while it dries. You get the body of a natural without the fruit shouting, and the coffee takes a slightly longer roast without complaint.

This is the bag we hand people who say they do not like light roasts, and it is where most of our standing orders settle by their third delivery.

One farm, one family, fourteen hectares. We have bought from them for five harvests in a row.

“I have tried four subscriptions and this is the one I kept. The bag lands on Friday, it was roasted on Thursday, and when I asked for a coarser grind they changed it the same day.”

Helen R., Leeds — Roaster’s Choice, every 2 weeks