We’re back with our friends from south of Houston, TX with this honey process Villa Sarchi variety selection from Costa Rica. It’s Friyay, so let’s jump right in!
Purchase this coffee directly for $15.50/12oz
Nicaragua Finca La Neutral review
PEARLAND COFFEE ROASTERS COSTA RICA HACIENDA SONORA VILLA SARCHI
Pearland Coffee Roasters is located in Pearland, Texas, just south of the Houston metro area. They’ve been roasting and serving specialty coffee in that area for years and with a solid reputation. I loved their current Nicaraguan selection and the link to that review is above. Today I have their offering from Costa Rica. This coffee is Villa Sarchi variety and it’s honey processed. Honey coffees don’t actually have honey added to them or used in the process. It’s an “in-between” way of handling coffee between “natural” processing, which dries the coffee cherries whole and intact like big raisins with the seeds (coffee beans) still inside and “washing” coffee, where the cherries are ruptured, all the goop inside is washed away and the beans are dried all cleaned up and alone.
In honey processing, the coffee cherries are broken open and the skins are removed. Depending on the type of honey (often referred to as “yellow,” “red,” or “black”) process being used, some amount of the goop inside the fruit (mucilage, often called “honey” and hence the name) is still left clinging to the seeds. These gooey, sticky coffee beans are put out on rasied mesh beds to dry and they take on some sweetness and fruitiness usually associated with naturals but retain less of the ferment notes of those coffees. Personally, I’m usually hard-pressed to tell the difference between honeys and washed coffees when I’m drinking them alone like I do in reviews, but so much depends on the coffee, the processing, the roasting, etc.
This particular coffee comes from Villa Sonora, located in Costa Rica’s Central Valley at the foot of Poas Volcano. A bit less than half the farm is planted with highly shaded coffee. About 1/3 of the farm is wild forest reserve and 1/5 of the farm is sugar cane. It’s a rich, diverse environment at 1200masl. Pearland gives us tasting notes of, “Raspberry, honey dew melon and dark chocolate” for this coffee. Yum! I’m using my standard pourover method of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of water in a notNeutral Gino dripper. I always use Third Wave Water and my Handground grinder is set to 3.
I’m greeted by a medium-full bodied coffee with a dense mouthfeel. This coffee really spreads over my palate and seems to press some weight onto my tongue. There’s a lot of dense, honey-like sweetness to this cup right up front in the sip and it’s accompanied by an apple-like acidity (think some of the sweetness and crispness of red apples with a bit of the zing and tartness of green apple). I also get some pretty apparent lime acidity in this coffee, which I always associate with a citrus flavor that is accompanied by some bitterness. I know “bitter” is a turn off as a descriptor, but coffee as a whole is inherently bitter, so in this context it’s actually really delicious, balancing and adds a nice complexity to the cup. As the cup really cooled off quite a bit it opened up both the raspberry and melon notes mentioned in the descriptor. The melon is really hard to isolate and put my finger on as a flavor and it comes through in the coffee as more of a “feel” than a flavor, if that makes any sense at all (not sure it even does to me! LOL). The raspberry reads as raspberry jam for me, and it comes in the second half of the sip with some hints of roast and artisanal dark chocolate, so I get this nice finish of a raspberry infused high quality chocolate bar and it’s glorious. I haven’t had a lot of 100% Villa Sarchi coffees, but the ones I have had all have this overall tone that reminds me of sweet, fruit-infused balsamic vinegars. This one isn’t as obvious as some others I’ve had, but they all seem to share this overtone of tartness and savoriness that I can only assume comes from the variety itself. It adds a whole extra layer of complexity and flavor notes that overlay the rest of the description I gave. I know it sounds weird, but it’s really good and I’m loving this Pearland selection. Excellent roasting of the right sourcing of coffees and this is the type of magic that happens. This coffee will reward patience, so give it plenty of time to rest and cool down, probably more so than you usually do, and you’ll be presented with a ton of flavors that, somehow, all really work well together and make for a complex, yet super drinkable cup.
Side note: I did try this as espresso. With shorter pulls in the 1:1.5 ratio range it was a little rowdy and kind of sour but if I did long pulls to 1:2 or even a little beyond that it was pretty mellow with some nice lime notes and dark chocolate going on. Not my favorite single origin espresso but it’s so killer as a pourover that’s definitely the way to go!