Honduras San Juan Sitio 1 Washed Bourbon Coffee Beans: Grading, Pricing, Green Beans and Roasting

Honduras San Juancito Lot#1

Variety: Bourbon

Producer: COMISAJUL Cooperative Organization

San Juancito is a small village in central Honduras, 40 kilometers northeast of the capital, Tegucigalpa. The town belongs to the Francisco Morazán district, which also includes Nuevo Rosario, Guacamaya, and Plan Grande, with a combined population of roughly 1400.

San Juancito was historically known for its mineral deposits; today its importance comes from lying within the buffer zone of La Tigra National Park-a rainforest ecosystem and Honduras' first national park. The park acts as an enormous reservoir, supplying drinking water for 500,000 residents of the capital.

Flavor: Clean, roasted nuts, milk chocolate

Honduras divides its coffee-growing territory into six major areas spread across the west and south: Santa Barbara, El Paraiso, Copan, La Paz, Comayagua, and Olancho. The average cultivation altitude is above 1100 meters. The coffee is all Arabica, with 69% classified as HG "High Grown," 12% as SHG "Strictly High Grown," and 19% as CS. Main varieties include Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, Villa Sarchi, and Lempira.

About Bourbon Coffee

Bourbon coffee (French: Café Bourbon) comes from Arabica trees of the Bourbon cultivar. Bourbon was first cultivated on Réunion, called Bourbon Island (Île Bourbon) before 1789, and is now one of the two most widely grown Arabica coffees globally. It is typically grown at altitudes between 3500-6500 feet (1062-1972 meters).

Brewing Instructions

Hand-poured Honduras: 15g of coffee, medium grind (Fuji ghost-tooth burr grinder at #4), V60 dripper, water at 88-89°C. First pour 30g of water and bloom for 27 seconds, then pour to 105g and pause. Once the water level drops to half, resume pouring, slowly, up to 225g total, avoiding the tail section. Water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, extraction time 2:00.

Country: Honduras

Region: San Juancito

Altitude: 1450-1550 meters

Process: Washed

Because Honduras sits in the tropics, San Juancito sees minimal temperature variation through the year: "winter" is really the rainy season and "summer" the dry season. In the tropics, altitude shapes temperature far more than the calendar does, and San Juancito's location at 1239 meters above sea level keeps things pleasantly cool year-round. In summer (March-June) the maximum temperature typically hovers around 26°C with an average minimum of about 18°C; in winter the average maximum is 20°C and the minimum about 14°C.

San Juancito's modern economy runs largely on agriculture, most of it small-scale coffee. The climate and altitude are highly favorable for quality beans. COMISAJUL, a cooperative of hundreds of smallholder coffee farmers in central Honduras, is based in San Juancito. Coffee there grows on mountains at 1450-1550 meters, shaded by banana, avocado, and papaya trees. During harvest, farmers hand-pick ripe fruit, then wash and sun-dry it; the fermentation water carrying pulp and skin is collected and reused as fertilizer for the coffee trees. The result is a very clean cup with high sweetness, very mild acidity, and milk chocolate notes.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Washing is the classic water-based way to process coffee cherries: flotation, de-pulping, a ferment-and-soak to remove the mucilage, a rinse or further soak, then drying and hulling. The extended water contact consumes simple sugars and raises organic acids inside the bean, so washed coffees highlight the bean's own character while staying bright, clean, and fresh-exactly the profile of this Honduran lot.

Two other FrontStreet washed beans are worth a place on your shelf. The FrontStreet Kenya Cherry Tomato shows Kenya's mastery of double-washed processing: an extra wash-and-soak cycle delivers an intensely juicy cup of cherry tomato, dark plum, snow pear, black plum, and yellow sugar. The FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1 demonstrates how washing protects delicate origins with limited sunshine-drying happens faster and the beans stay pristine, yielding a perfectly balanced cup of hazelnut, cream, chocolate, and caramel with no single note overpowering the rest.

For this Honduras Lot#1, brew 15g at a medium grind size with 88-89°C water on a V60, 1:15 ratio-the clean nut-and-chocolate sweetness makes it an easy everyday cup.