Guatemala Antigua Finca San Miguel Urias

This coffee comes from Finca San Miguel Urias, whose farm and mill straddle the edge of Antigua town, not far from Ciudad Vieja. The farm is planted  primarily in Caturra variety, a natural dwarf mutation of Bourbon, along with smaller amounts of H1 and Bourbon. This lot was part of the Fermentation Project global tasting kit, a project put together by fermentation specialist Lucia Solis, and coffee coffee James Hoffmann to examine the impact of fermentation on what we experience in the cup. For the Project, the same coffee lot was harvested and processed in parallel, but utilizing different fermentation approaches in order to understand their influence on flavor. This coffee was the mechanically demucilaged ("machine washed") control, which in many ways served as the somewhat neutral reference point to the three types of fermentations performed with the other three. The process involves pulping the cherry and fruit mucilage in one fell swoop, then sending the coffee straight to the drying patio. The mechanical demucilage process uses very little water compared to traditional wet processing, so you often see this type of wet mill in areas with water scarcity, like Tanzania. Efficiency, and the ability to control how much fruit is left on the seed (if any), also make it a popular choice for mills that produce a lot of honeys, like Costa Rica.