Honduras Flavor Profile and Aroma - Types and Prices of Honduran Coffee

Brewing Honduran Coffee as a Pour-Over

Dose 15g of coffee ground to a medium fineness (Fuji ghost tooth burr grinder at setting #4), and brew with a V60 dripper at 88–89°C. Start with a 30g pour and bloom for 27 seconds, then pour up to 105g and pause. Once the water level in the coffee bed has dropped to about half, resume pouring slowly until you reach 225g in total, discarding the tail end of the brew. Use a 1:15 water-to-coffee ratio, with a total extraction time of 2:00.

Climate and Geography of San Juancito

Honduras sits in the tropics, so San Juancito barely experiences temperature swings through the year. What passes for winter there is really the rainy season, and "summer" is simply the dry season. In tropical regions, altitude shapes temperature far more than the timing of rainfall does. Sitting at 1,239 meters above sea level, San Juancito feels pleasantly cool in every season. During summer (March–June), highs hover around 26°C and lows average about 18°C; in winter, the average high is 20°C and the average low about 14°C.

The COMISAJUL Cooperative and Coffee Production

San Juancito's modern economy runs largely on agriculture, most of it small-scale coffee farming. The local climate and altitude are highly favorable for growing high-quality beans. COMISAJUL, a cooperative of hundreds of smallholder coffee farmers in central Honduras, is based in San Juancito. Its members cultivate coffee on mountainsides at 1,450–1,550 meters, under shade from banana, avocado, and papaya trees. During harvest, farmers hand-pick only the ripe cherries, wash-process them, and then dry them in the sun. The fermenting water left over from washing—full of pulp and skin—is collected and reused as fertilizer for the coffee trees. The resulting cup is very clean, with high sweetness, very gentle acidity, and notes of milk chocolate.

Variety: Bourbon

Producer: COMISAJUL Cooperative

The Village of San Juancito

San Juancito is a small village in central Honduras, about 40 kilometers northeast of the capital, Tegucigalpa. Together with Nuevo Rosario, Guacamaya, and Plan Grande, it forms part of the Francisco Morazán department and has a total population of roughly 1,400.

Why the Environment Matters

San Juancito was historically known for its mineral deposits, but today it stands out for a different reason: it lies within the buffer zone of La Tigra National Park, a cloud forest ecosystem and Honduras's first national park. The park acts as an enormous watershed, supplying drinking water to 500,000 residents of the capital.

Flavor Notes: Clean, roasted nuts, milk chocolate

Honduras's Coffee Regions

Honduran coffee comes from six major growing regions across the west and south of the country: Santa Barbara, El Paraiso, Copan, La Paz, Comayagua, and Olancho. The average cultivation altitude is above 1,100 meters, and all the coffee is Arabica—69% is classified as HG (High Grown), 12% as SHG (Strictly High Grown), and 19% as CS. The main varieties are Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, Villa Sarchi, and Lempira.

About Bourbon Coffee

Bourbon (in French, Café Bourbon) is coffee from Arabica trees of the Bourbon cultivar. It was first cultivated on Réunion, known as Bourbon Island (Île Bourbon) before 1789, when the French used the island as a link between Africa and Latin America; today Bourbon is grown across most of the world's leading Arabica regions. It is typically planted at altitudes of 3,500 to 6,500 feet (1,062–1,972 meters).

Honduras San Juancito Lot#1 Specifications

Country: Honduras

Region: San Juancito

Altitude: 1,450–1,550 meters

Processing Method: Washed

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If you enjoy this kind of gentle, chocolatey Central American profile, FrontStreet Coffee's medium-roast lineup is worth a look. For a balanced cup that leans neither sour nor bitter, FrontStreet's Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1—roasted medium to bring its acidity, bitterness, sweetness, and body into perfect harmony—delivers baked notes of chocolate, roasted nuts, cream, and caramel. FrontStreet's Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon from Brazil is another medium-roast option, offering a soft, sweet cup with cream, peanut, chocolate, toast, and sugarcane notes that works beautifully as a pour-over, moka pot, or espresso brew.