Good morning and welcome to today’s review of Cielito Lindo, a Honduran coffee from my friends at Theodore’s Coffee Roasters. Check out the links below and let’s dive into this coffee!
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THEODORE’S COFFEE ROASTERS CIELITO LINDO
Theodore’s Coffee Roasters was founded in 2013 by Darwin Pavon and is currently located in the western Michigan town of Zeeland. Originally from Honduras, Darwin is an agronomist who works closely with thousands of farmers throughout Central and South America, and his knowledge of coffee is second to none in the business. Surely having boots on the ground has given him access to farms we otherwise probably would have never been exposed to, and I can only imagine that Darwin takes extra pride in Honduran coffees like this one from Cielito Lindo I’m drinking today. Unfortunately it looks like this one is unavailable at the moment and I’m not sure if that’s because it is sold out or if it’s just off the TCR site, but you cannot go wrong with any coffee from Theodore’s… I say you can buy literally anything from them and it will be good, so don’t let that turn you away, and keep your eyes peeled in case Cielito Lindo returns to the site.
Cielito Lindo is a coffee from the farm of Beto Gutierrez, Mi Cielito, located in the mountains around Santa Barbara, Honduras. This is in the western part of Honduras, bordering Guatemala. Beto has won the Cup of Excellence auction in Honduras before, which says a lot about his growing practices! This lot is Catimor/IHCAFE 90 variety grown at 1750masl and this is a washed coffee.
I’m using my standard pourover setup today with a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper. This is a flat-bottom brewer that uses Kalita 155 filters and I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the coffee bed while brewing. My grinder for pourovers is an Orphan Espresso Lido 3. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and a total brew time of 3:10.
The aroma from this coffee has nicely browned sugars in it and something else I’m having trouble placing… maybe a bit of caramel, but the more I smell the more chocolate I’m getting in the aroma here. Taking a sip this is a medium to medium+ bodied coffee for me and as the cup is cooling off the mouthfeel is definitely “tightening” up and becoming denser feeling on my palate. It has a dairy/creamy presence on my palate that I really enjoy and that certainly adds to the experience. Taking a sip, this is a nicely balanced cup from start to finish. I’m getting a caramel sweetness here that is balanced by some fruitiness in the mid-sip. There are peaches here for me, which I really like with the creamy body of this coffee… the peaches n’ cream vibe is wonderful! Regular readers know I’m a sucker for peach notes in coffee, so this review has already pretty much written itself! LOL The peach note carries into the finish and lingers in the aftertaste, which I really can’t be happier with. Also in the fruit profile here I am getting a little bit of citrus (we’ve been eating a lot of mandarins this winter, so naturally I am inclined to draw a comparison there) and that also pulls into the finish and early aftertaste. Pulling this coffee as espresso yielded a bright, “modern” cup and pulled out mostly the mandarin and citrus notes with some shots having a cherry-forward note, too. Back to this cup, it’s a joy to drink. The creamy, dense body, peach and citrus is nicely balanced and has a depth of flavor that I am really digging. This a banger of a coffee! If you can get your hands on this one, definitely give it a chance to cool down. I started drinking, as I always do, when it was still at too hot of a temperature (purposefully, to see how it changes through the whole range of temps), and a few minutes off the brew it was coming through as somewhat thin and weak, but when it cools down into the optimal zone, it is a totally different experience, so let this coffee get below 105F or so and you’ll be deeply rewarded!
Looking at Theodore’s Coffee Roasters’ description for this coffee they say, “Caramel, white peaches, Rainier cherries and creamy aftertaste with citrus like mandarin finish.” Well, there you go! Great minds think alike! LOL