The technology behind
Just add filtered water to enjoy one of our picks of the season.
These Steeped bags are a simple and elegant way to present a selection of the coffees we find most exciting, removing many brewing variables, and allowing quality and character to shine.
Individual doses are ground and sealed in nitrogen-flushed packages, maintaining the clear aromatic character of freshly ground coffee, for over a year after roasting.
Baltazar Mendez
A long drive up into the mountains from Concepción Huista, one of the larger towns in the area, lies Baltazar Mendez’s farm. Here in the Huista micro-region, the landscape is dominated by very small-scale farms and the Mendez family farm is no different, at only 1.1 hectares. Growing and selling coffee provides the main income for the family, like many others in this remote and agriculturally dependent region.
They have named the farm Q’antxabina’, the local dialect word for the Guachipilin tree, which provides much of the shade on the farm. Just a few years ago, Baltazar settled back in Guatemala to start farming with his family, after years as a migrant worker in the US. He sought out the Primavera program in the Huista area, gaining vital knowledge in order to increase and stabilise his income from coffee.
Washed Caturra
Like many rural farmers, Baltazar is motivated to earn more in order to give his children better opportunities than he had. The family do all of the farm work themselves, transporting baskets of cherry back to their small mill on horseback. Here, they are de-pulped directly and fermented in tanks until the mucilage is broken down.
The conditions high in the tropical Guatemalan highlands, characterised by high humidity and cool temperatures, lead to a long, slow fermentation of around 40 hours. This leads to a crisp and complex expression in Baltazar’s coffee, with notes of red grape balanced by a rich toffee-like sweetness, before a black tea finish.