San Martin Honey

Back in 2021 we reached out to Selva, our sourcing partners in Costa Rica, to ask for their recommendation for a producer who would be interested in developing a long term, mutually beneficial partnership. To this day we are so grateful for their introduction to Mauricio Jimenez, and we are proud of how this relationship has grown over the years.

Our primary sourcing goal is to maximise our impact with each of our producing partners, which in most cases simply means returning each year to buy as much of their coffee as possible. For various reasons we have historically only been able to source microlot volumes from Mauricio, however this year we are so pleased to have secured the entirety of his ‘main lot’, this white honey catuai, for the first time, enabling us to deepen our impact considerably. One of the many benefits of this approach is that we are now the only roastery in the world sharing Mauricio’s coffee.

Mauricio uses his neighbour’s wet mill in the nearby town of San Pablo. First, floaters are removed before the ripe cherries go through the depulping machine. Next, the coffee passes through the mechanical mucilage remover that is adjusted to leave a certain amount of mucilage on the seeds. In the case of this lot, Mauricio has chosen to leave about 10% of the mucilage on the seeds while drying, resulting in what he describes as a “White Honey” process. By taking this approach, Mauricio is able to achieve a clean and sweet yet complex and nuanced profile. Finally, the parchment is dried on raised beds typically for around 10-12 days until a moisture content of 10-10.5% is achieved.