Finca Oriflama, San Marcos, Guatemala

We received a kind gift of green beans from Andrea and Ñuno. Their neighbor  has a coffee Finca, and they encouraged us to try the beans. Last night (Jan.21) we roasted  green beans from Finca Oriflama at Villas B'alam Ya. Lighting wasn't so good on the deck, but the weather was great! This morning Cynthia came for millet breakfast, coffee and a lovely talk about discrimination, kindness and mindfulness using coffee as the avenue in. We had our first espresso, it was really good! Chocolatety, bitter in a good way, extra-dry, grapefruit, sour cherry, nutty-earthy, tart and a tiny bit ashy. And with milk, as a cortado, it was excellent, fairly complex in flavours. One person commented later-on how good it was as a laxative...

Currently we are experimenting with blending Finca Oriflama and 4-5 other excellent but slightly acidic Guatemalan coffees, and using an equal percentage of a PNG beautifully roasted by the Green Beanery in Toronto. We are striving to produce a wide range of flavours, rich complexity and superb mouth feel and getting excellent results. Now, our aim is to find a local coffee to roast, and enough of it, that could replace the PNG to act as a base for a superb, well rounded espresso blend of Guatemalan coffees.