How Much Water for 15g? How to Brew Honduras COE #17 Don Juan Estate Pacas Washed Coffee

How Much Water for 15g of Coffee? Brewing Honduras COE #17 Don Juan Estate Pacas Washed

(Honduras Santa Bárbara Don Juan Pacas Washed 2017 COE #17)

Flavor Description

Citrus, blackberry, honey, chocolate; a strong aroma with the texture of orange juice — rounded, sweet, soft, and smooth.

Awards

17th place, 2017 Honduras Cup of Excellence (COE) — the farm's first time entering.

Coffee Origin Information

Country: Honduras

Region: Gungora village, Concepción Sur, Santa Bárbara, Montecillos region

Estate: Finca Don Juan

Variety: Pacas

Altitude: 1,750 meters on average

Grade: European Preparation Strictly Hard Bean (SHB)

Processing: Washed

Harvest Period: December to March of the following year

Certification: None

Introduction

This competition lot took 17th place in the 2017 Honduras Cup of Excellence — the farm's first entry. The beans are washed Pacas from Finca Don Juan in Gungora village, Santa Bárbara, owned and run by Juan Antonio Contreras. He began growing coffee in the 1970s on just two hectares, later sold that plot, and eventually expanded to the current 18 hectares at an average altitude of 1,750 meters. The farm plants Pacas, Parainema, and Lempira, and Contreras cultivates it himself with 20 permanent employees plus 100 seasonal workers during harvest. The picked cherries go to a washing mill in the town of Peña Blanca, operated by his son, for post-harvest processing.

Juan Antonio Contreras receives technical guidance from IHCAFE, whose assistance lets him analyze soil composition as the basis for two kinds of fertilization while applying targeted treatments against pests and diseases.

Placing 17th in the country's foremost competition on a first attempt is a remarkable result.

The estate's shade trees — cedro, guama, and avocado — provide sparse cover, and great care goes into training workers to pick only ripe red cherries. The harvested cherries are fermented and washed the same day, then sun-dried for 12–15 days to finish. Contreras keeps refining his cultivation and washed processing in pursuit of ever-better coffee. This competition lot totals just 660 kilograms, so quantities are limited. Flavor: citrus, blackberry, honey, chocolate; strong aroma, orange-juice texture; rounded, sweet, soft, and smooth.

Honduras Coffee Overview

Honduras's major producing regions lie in the west and south: Copan, Opalaca, Montecillos, Comayagua, Agalta, and El Paraíso. Average cultivation altitudes range from 1,100 to over 1,600 meters. Varieties are 100% Arabica — 69% graded HG, 12% SHG, and 19% CS — with Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, Villa Sarchi, and Lempira as the main cultivars.

Honduran coffee holds a consistently high quality at some of the most competitive prices in Central America. The small, round, slightly blue-green beans show mild fruit acidity, a full body, and subtle sweetness, suiting both blends and single origins; they take well to medium and darker roasts and are exported mainly to the United States, Germany, and Japan.

Honduras has become Central America's largest coffee producer, with output climbing year after year. In 2012, helped by favorable international prices, production surpassed the 2010 level of 5 million bags, with significant gains in both volume and quality.

FrontStreet Coffee's Recommended Pour-Over Parameters

Three-Pour Method

Suitable for medium-roasted coffee.

Use a V60 dripper. The method below is demonstrated with Colombian Nariño, whose balanced, gentle, clean flavors of almond, citrus, and white chocolate respond beautifully — but it works just as well for the Don Juan Pacas above. Segmented three-pour extraction delivers more layers than a single pour, clearly separating the coffee's front, middle, and back-end flavors. The idea is to increase the water volume with each pour after the bloom, typically pouring just as the liquid is about to drop to the level of the coffee bed, using small, medium, and large flows across the three pours. It does demand fairly precise control of flow rate and volume.

The bloom needs no stirring to improve saturation, and no slow dripping to deepen infiltration, which makes the method broadly suitable for most specialty beans — especially medium roasts from Central and South America. It is the method most coffee shops use. Watch the stopwatch, the scale, the flow rate, and the water volume; most people who study pour-over seriously settle on this approach.

Three-Pour Method in Practice

Coffee: 15g

Water: 235g

Water temperature: 88–89°C

Dripper: Kono works well

Time: 2 minutes

Grind size: Sugar-granule texture

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Beans That Shine in a V60

The three-pour recipe above is only as good as the bean behind it. Hario's V60 — redesigned in 2004 around its signature 60° cone and single large hole — extends water-to-coffee contact and rewards precise pouring with layered aroma and lively acidity, making it the perfect stage for floral, fruit-driven coffees. FrontStreet Coffee recommends:

The FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Gedeb (Guodingding) is many coffee lovers' first specialty bean: vivid citrus, berries, and florals with a green-tea-like sweetness, its acidity soft and bright like fresh fruit rather than harsh — a gentle welcome to pour-over. The FrontStreet Ethiopian Flower Princess (Hua Kui) is one of recent years' biggest stars, with pronounced tropical aromas of strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit, and lychee, obvious sweetness, minimal bitterness, and a smooth, juicy mouthfeel — often called "the least coffee-like coffee." For a legendary cup, the FrontStreet Panama Esmeralda Red Label Geisha offers elegant jasmine with citrus, bergamot, and black-tea refinement, a clean transparent body, and a long finish — a bucket-list experience for any coffee lover. And for fans of this Honduras lot's juicy profile, the FrontStreet Kenya Cherry Tomato from Thika (SL28 and SL34 at 1,550–1,750 meters, 72-hour double-washed fermentation) delivers bright cherry-tomato and dried-plum acidity with snow pear, black plum, yellow sugar, and a whisper of green tea in a vibrant, juice-like cup.