Unique Coffee Flavors of Costa Rica - Flavor Descriptions of Canet Estate Bahia Honey Process Series

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FrontStreet Coffee Costa Rica — Canet Estate — Bahia — Honey Process

Costa Rica Canet Beethoven — exclusive, refined honey processing that creates wonderfully distinctive flavors.

Yellow Catuai (Catuai Amarillo) is a cross between Mundo Novo and Caturra, first bred in 1949 at Brazil's Instituto Agronômico de Campinas. Like Red Catuai (Catuai Rojo), Yellow Catuai has extremely high disease resistance and suits high-altitude, windy growing areas. Both Catuais are known for very delicate, clean acidity. Depending on how much mucilage is retained, machine-adjusted processing yields red honey and yellow honey coffees. Canet sits in Tarrazu, the highest-altitude coffee region of Costa Rica — also the country's most intensively farmed fruit-growing zone. The estate owner grows passion fruit primarily, so coffee production is scarce: the trees occupy only a small, carefully tended plot, and only fully ripe red cherries are picked.

Black Honey Processing

[100%] Full mucilage retention with a zero-water process. The challenge of black honey is perfect "timing." On harvest day, the cherries are depulped with the mucilage layer left intact, then dried. Climate is the make-or-break factor: there must be abundant sunshine to dry the bean surface, leaving the beans slightly darker in color than red honey — that is black honey. The estate's unique Yellow Catuai black honey lot is named Bahia. In the cup it offers rich variation, a full-bodied mouthfeel, excellent cleanliness, and outstanding sweetness, with fruit acidity that moves from berries to citrus across many layered stages.

Dry Aroma:

Cherry, berries, plum, strawberry, peach, jasmine

Wet Aroma:

Intense, assertive floral and fruit notes, sweet and delicate — lemon, citrus, and berries with a mature winey acidity and a pleasant floral lift.

Cupping Notes:

Grape, vanilla, strawberry, melon, and citrus aromas, pomegranate-juice acidity, excellent cleanliness, smooth mouthfeel, and a hint of green kiwi at the end.

FrontStreet Coffee Costa Rica — Canet Estate — Bahia — Honey Process

Coffee Bean Region: Tarrazu

Estate Established: 2005

Estate Size: Approximately 1.5 hectares

Cultivation Area: Approximately 0.5 hectares

Annual Rainfall: Approximately 3000 mm

Average Temperature: 20°C

Planting Altitude: 1820 meters

Coffee Variety: Yellow Catuai

Grade Standard: SHB

Soil Type: Volcanic soil

Coffee Processing: Black honey process

Harvesting Method: Hand-picked

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Honey processing began as Brazil's pulped natural method — removing the skin and drying the beans with part of the fruit still attached — which shortened drying time while taming the off-flavors of uncontrolled fermentation. Costa Rica borrowed the idea and refined it by controlling how much mucilage is kept and how long the beans dry, giving rise to black honey, red honey, yellow honey, and white honey.

Black honey is the most demanding of the family: nearly all the mucilage is left on, and drying takes at least 2 weeks, often under shade covers to slow the sun and let the sugars fully develop, with the beans turned regularly to prevent uneven heating and over-fermentation. FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rica Blackberry is processed exactly this way and roasted medium-light — the ground coffee blooms with fresh floral aroma, and the cup brings grape, berry, and ripe blackberry flavors.

If you enjoy honey-processed coffee, also try FrontStreet Coffee's Costa Rica Mozart, made with the innovative raisin honey process: cherries are first dried on raised beds for at least three days — like raisins — before the skin and pulp are removed, with 100% of the mucilage retained. That extra step demands even stricter timing than black honey, and it pays off in richer cooked-fruit sweetness. However you brew it — pour-over, cold brew, or moka pot — you will find osmanthus flower, pineapple, and raisin aromas.

For a honey-processed coffee with a twist, look for FrontStreet Coffee's Strawberry Candy blend, which pairs Panama Geisha with Costa Rican raisin-honey coffee: the Geisha contributes its classic orange-blossom and honey character, while the Costa Rican component — 100% mucilage retained, zero water — adds grape and dried blueberry fragrance, soft fruit acidity, an almond finish, and clear, pronounced sweetness.