The green
Sack tag · 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
- Harvest
- Picked December to February, landed 22 May
- In the store
- Six sacks of 69 kg, three left
On the table
red apple · demerara · almond
The everyday one. Honey process leaves some mucilage on the seed through drying, which gives you the body of a natural without the fruit shouting, and it takes an extra six degrees without complaint. This is the lot we hand people who say they do not like light roasts, and it is the one most of our standing orders settle on by the third bag.
The curve
Rung 2 of 4 · dropped at 206 °C
- Charge
- 196 °C
- drum, at the moment the green goes in
- Turning point
- 1:45 at 95 °C
- where the bean stops cooling and starts heating
- First crack
- 8:48
- the seed splits along its centre crease
- Drop
- 10:40
- hatch open at 206 °C, four minutes to cool
- Development
- 1:52 · 17.5 %
- crack to drop, and its share of the roast
- Weight loss
- 15.1 %
- green to roasted, water and chaff
Every batch of this lot is roasted to that shape and written down afterwards, whether it landed or not. The last eight sheets are in the roast log.
How we brewed it
Dialled on the bench, three days off the roast
Filter
58 g/L, 93 °C, 2:40 total, ground medium
Rinsed paper, bloom with twice the coffee weight for forty seconds, then two even pours. If it tastes thin, grind finer before you touch the temperature — that is the change with the shortest odds.
Espresso
18 g in, 40 g out, 29 s, 93 °C
Aim for that window and adjust the grind, not the dose. Under-extracted tastes sharp and empty; over-extracted goes dry and hollow at the finish. The middle of the two is where this lot lives.
Both recipes assume filtered water at roughly 80 ppm hardness and a brewer at room temperature. Cafés on the wholesale list get these dialled in on their own machine, with their own water, before the first delivery.