Tropical, Lime, Mango

Producer: Small Holders Farmers
Origin: Ayarza, Guatemala
Varietal: Anacafe 14, Bourbon, Catuai, Pache
Elevation: 1800 masl

This special anaerobic natural lot was processed at the 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. 

Arnaldo López (56) is one of the many producers we work with at Ayarza cherry mill and has been involved in coffee production business his entire life. His father took him into the field to plant coffee trees as a child. Now Arnaldo has five children of his own and the cultivation of coffee has provided a platform for the family to grow and improve their quality of life.

Arnaldo farms 12.6ha of land and production has varied greatly over the years. Like many farmers in this current crop the volume is down compared to prior years. Two factors have driven this decrease - large crops from the year before and disease attacking some of the traditional varieties. The new varieties (Anacafe 14 and others) that are being planted have shown more production and disease resistance. Arnaldo has pushed through these adversities with the financial support of a livestock trade and an extra income from the small supply store run by his wife Alicia Trigueros.

The Region

The region of Ayarza is a special one, landmarked by the drastic landscape and cold blue water from the Laguna de Ayarza and Laguna Azul. The lake was formed by two massive volcanos that collapsed and formed a large crater.
The legends surrounding this lake are numerous and the bottom has never been found. There is a large white rock of a petrified woman who didn’t follow the orders of Jesus. In short, there are simply too many good stories about Ayarza to do it justice!

Olam Guatemala always knew the region had massive potential to produce specialty coffee, but the cups that we found were usually solid but unsurprising. Two years ago we rented a wet mill at 1,500 meters on a RFA certified farm. The quality coming from our washed coffee was much better than we expected. Next we tried some naturals by buying cherry in Ayarza and transporting it to a region that had plenty of patios and good wind for drying. This has now been extended to include honey process alongside experimental lots.

The Process

This lot is naturally processed with a 120 hour cherry fermentation in anaerobic conditions. As with all good naturals, the process starts with cherry selection. For this coffee, cherries from high altitude farms are carefully selected for optimum ripeness. These cherries are then placed into recycled hermetic bag liners and a further polyprolene bag to protect the cherries and allow for ventilation of CO2 without introducing oxygen. 

After fermentation the cherries are patio dried in a very thin layer to halt the fermentation process and immediately begin drying. After 10 days of sun drying to 22% the cherries are finished in a mechanical dryer to 11.5%.