El Salvador Himalaya Estate Honey Red Bourbon Flavor Profile, Growing Region, and Brewing Parameters

Bourbon Coffee Origins

Bourbon coffee was first cultivated on Réunion Island, which went by the name Île Bourbon before 1789. Put simply, Bourbon is a coffee variety belonging to a branch of the Arabica species. It typically produces red fruit, which is why it's called Red Bourbon. There are also Yellow Bourbon and Orange Bourbon; Yellow Bourbon yields relatively less but offers superior quality.

Brewing Method

To hand-pour Salvadoran coffee: use 15g of beans at a medium grind (Fujiyama ghost-tooth grinder, #4) in a V60 dripper with water at 88-89°C. Start with a 30g pour and a 27-second bloom, then pour to 105g and pause. Once the water level in the coffee bed drops to halfway, keep pouring slowly until you reach 225g, discarding the tail end. That's a 1:15 water-to-coffee ratio with a 2:00 extraction time.

Processing Method

Processing: Semi-washed

Himalaya Estate

Himalaya Estate sits in the renowned Santa Ana growing region of the Apaneca mountain range, at an altitude of 1,580-1,720 meters. It is one of the few estates managed by Aida Batlle, and its primary variety is Bourbon.

The beans from this estate are washed at the El Divisadero processing plant in Ataco under Mauricio Salaverria's management, then dried evenly on African raised beds with a combination of sun-drying and ventilation. Mauricio inherited the business from his parents and grandparents and has been involved with coffee since childhood, with a particular focus on specialty cultivation.

Flavor Profile

Flavor description: red wine acidity, plum, brown sugar, a full-bodied mouthfeel and a long aftertaste.

El Salvador Finca Himalaya

Country: El Salvador

Estate: Himalaya Estate

Region: Santa Ana

Altitude: 1580-1720 meters

Varieties: Red Bourbon, Typica

Processing Plant: El Divisadero

Flavor: Plum, brown sugar, red wine acidity

About Project Origin

Sasa Sestic, the 2015 World Barista Champion, launched a green-bean sourcing project called Project Origin three years ago with his business team at ONA Coffee. The project works directly with coffee farmers in impoverished countries and regions to improve their production conditions, and pays them purchase prices 20% higher than fair-trade prices.

The project's founding aim also includes strengthening the bond between roasters and coffee farmers and guiding farmers toward growing higher-quality coffee. To date, Sasa has built relationships with coffee growers in eight countries, among them Brazil, Panama, India, Ethiopia, El Salvador and Costa Rica.

Product Information

Ingredients: In-house roasted

Shelf life: 30 days

Net weight: 227g

Packaging: Bulk coffee beans

Roast level: Roasted coffee beans

Origin: El Salvador

Coffee type: Other

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

A honey-processed Red Bourbon like this one — all red-wine acidity and plum — is exactly the kind of coffee a V60 was made for. Hario's cone dripper, with its 60° angle and single large hole, forces the water toward the center before it drops through, stretching the contact time between water and grounds so delicate aromatics and fruit can fully unfold. With a light roast, the result is a cup with layered fragrance and lively, fruit-driven acidity.

For pour-over fans chasing that same clarity, FrontStreet's Ethiopia Huakui is a great place to start. Its tropical-fruit aromatics leap out of the cup — strawberry, passion fruit, even jackfruit and lychee — with pronounced sweetness and almost no bitterness, so juicy and smooth that people call it "the coffee that doesn't taste like coffee." If you prefer something more classic, FrontStreet's Yirgacheffe shows bright citrus, berry and floral notes with a green-tea sweetness on the finish, and its gentle, fruit-like acidity is easy to love even for newcomers.

And if it's vivid acidity you're after, try FrontStreet's Kenya Cherry Tomato. Grown in Kenya's Thika region at 1,550-1,750 meters from the classic SL28 and SL34 varieties, it's given a Kenyan-style 72-hour double washed fermentation and roasted light to preserve its energy. Expect cherry tomato and smoked plum, bright and full like fresh-pressed juice, with pear and black plum mid-palate, then a clean, lingering finish of yellow-sugar sweetness and a whisper of green tea.