El Salvador

Whole Bean Coffee

El Salvador, Mapache Estate 

Varietal: Bourbon & Pacas

Process: Honey

Elevation: 1400 MASL

We taste: kiwi, brown sugar, honey

Mapache Coffee is a fifth-generation company of coffee producers, owned and managed by Jan-Carlo and Sofia Handtke in the Apaneca Ilamatepec mountain range of El Salvador. Mapache Coffee employs over 125 locals year-round, but during harvest season, their staff swells to 600 people who work together to build coffee nurseries, replant at Mapache’s six farm properties, and process the perfectly ripe cherries that come from them.

Mapache maintains a strong commitment to the well-being of the coffee forests, ensuring that every farm has a canopy protecting the coffee plants and soil. Their modern wet mill uses limited amounts of water during the washing process, then recycles and reuses that water in the same process. All the remaining pulp from the wet milling process is incorporated back into the farms as compost, returning key nutrients to the soil.

Mapache calls this Bourbon Honey lot one of their “Fantastic Four Coffees”. It was processed 100% by hand at their milling station. The fresh cherries are first floated using barrels full of clean water, then the pulp is separated using a manual pulper that uses no water at all. The mucilage covered beans are dried on their raised beds for more than 15 days. Partida 112 was picked in the middle of harvest when most of the cherries are perfectly ripe, making selection easier. The cherries come from unique rows of Bourbon planed at 1350 meters above sea level on “El Tamagás” peak, a mountain named from the poisonous snake that inhabits the mountains of Concepción de Ataco.