Description
Jose Eduardo Lopez owns 2 hectares of coffee in the Las Pacayas area of Corquin, Copan. Jose used to work as farm manager for Donaldo Fiallos (Aruco General Manager), managing his and his families’ farms. After saving up for years he was able to afford to buy a couple of hectares of land in an area known for good coffee.
Jose planted Catuai & Caturra because of it’s cup quality and rust resistance. Since his first production Jose has focused entirely on micro-lots. This year is his third year working with us and the quality has improved greatly.
The producers will receive about 70% of the FOB price for their micro lots. This year the harvest for all producers was extremely difficult with increased rains during the harvest and a lack of pickers meaning a large amount of coffee was lost from either falling to the ground or swelling and splitting on the tree.
This lot is a natural that was picked at the farm where it is then taken to the mill for floating and washing before being dried on raised beds for 20 – 30 days.
All the processing for the ML’s takes place at the Aruco mill to centralise and have greater control over the process to create consistent procedures but also to reduce the risk on the producer.
The mill is at 800masl which gives a drier more stable climate to dry the coffee compared to up at the farms where the weather can be less predictable. The coffee will be delivered to the mill where they assess the cherry (take Brix) and decide on the process for the coffees depending on space and what the producer has done already. The cherry is cleaned and washed and then floated to remove any immatures.
The coffee is then taken to the beds where it is dried for between 20 -30 days weather depending.