Costa Rica Anaerobic Finca Arecas

Rodolfo Valverde's farm, "Finca Arecas", is located in Palmichal de Acosta, a sort of buffer zone between busy San Jose and the more rural Tarrazú region. Arecas is planted in Caturra and Pacas San Ramon, and sits at roughly 1450 meters above sea level. At 11 hectares, it's on the small side for Costa Rica, and Rodolfo opts to sell his cherry to local millers rather than shouldering the expense of building out his own micro mill on the property. In this case, the coffee was sold to the nearby Palmichal mill, who we've bought from in previous years (see "Los Santos", "Vecindario", "Cristian Alvarez" etc). They are equipped with machinery to do both large volume blends, and small experimental lots, like this one. This anaerobic dry process involves first fermenting the whole cherries in airtight barrels with 1-way valves for around 70 hours. The coffee cherry is then moved to raised beds to dry. Both the anaerobic and natural/dry process methods are known for producing fruit-forward coffees, which rings true with Cristian Alvarez' coffee. The flavors are intense, with rustic fruit notes that carry a winey edginess to them. The coffee also presents a bit darker than a typical wet process lot, and produces more chaff during roasting. Be sure to pay attention to visual and audible queues, and vacuum your roaster between batches.