Honduras IHCAFE 90 Coffee Variety Introduction & Honduras Coffee Brand Recommendations

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Honduran coffee beans have always been renowned for their mild and elegant flavors. Today Honduras's coffee production model is dominated by small farmers, who account for over 60% of total production. But have you ever found it peculiar why the lengthy names of Honduran coffee beans so often contain the shadow of "San Vicente"? Let's start with the background of this processing plant.

Beneficio San Vicente

Beneficio San Vicente can be described as the most prestigious processing plant in Honduras. Such scale and reputation were built through decades of diligent cultivation by the Paz family.

Founder Fidel Paz began his coffee career in the early 1980s. Since then he has spent decades dedicated to various production and processing aspects, striving to enhance the reputation of Honduran coffee beans. As international coffee prices rose at the time, he also encouraged more local villagers to join the industry.

After twenty years of cultivation, by the early 2000s Beneficio San Vicente had already achieved great success. By then Fidel's nephews had grown up, and the younger generation—armed with more knowledge of agriculture, sales and roasting—joined the ranks. Around this time the trend of "single small farmer" and "micro-batch" processing began, and many coffee beans with such backgrounds emerged in the Cup of Excellence (COE) competitions.

In 2009 the Paz family's younger generation matured and joined as a fresh force. Every batch of coffee beans must undergo professional cupping and grading at the processing plant before release, after strict quality control. They work hard as communicators between local farmers and roasting plants of various scales, investing innovative ideas and practical approaches to maintain the best quality and flavor from start to finish.

Beneficio San Vicente's dedication extends beyond production and processing alone. They have decades of investment and cultivation in coffee bean origins, import-export trade and roasting methods. Whenever Honduran coffee beans are mentioned, most people associate them with Beneficio San Vicente. The character of pursuing excellence passed down through generations has made San Vicente a representative symbol of Honduran specialty coffee. San Vicente purchases coffee beans from surrounding small farmers, providing significant support to their knowledge, technology and economic conditions, and the result is coffee with high sweetness and rich fruit notes that always surprises.

What is IHCAFE 90?

This variety is rarely heard of, but it is actually Honduras's own child.

IHCAFE 90 is a new variety developed and named in the 1980s by Honduras's Hondureño del Café research institute. It is a hybrid of Timor and Caturra (Timor x Caturra). It has a relatively short stature, which makes care and harvesting convenient, and good resistance to leaf rust. It began being cultivated in Honduras in the 1980s and is a high-yield coffee variety that can be grown at lower altitudes. It offers rich flavor layers with caramel, mango and citrus sweetness, and has a very full body.

Honduran Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted Honduran coffee beans offer full assurance in both brand and quality. More importantly, they offer excellent value—a 227-gram box costs only 72 yuan. At 15 grams per cup, one package can make 15 cups, with each cup costing only about 5.4 yuan. Compared with the dozens of yuan per cup sold in coffee shops, this is truly a conscientious recommendation.

How Does FrontStreet Coffee Recommend Drinking Honduran Coffee?

Take FrontStreet Coffee's "Honduras San Juan Shido" as an example. We roast it to medium-dark to highlight the nutty, chocolate and balanced flavor characteristics of this bean.

• Filter cup: French press
• Water temperature: 88°C
• Grind size: Fuji grinder setting 4
• Roast level: Medium-dark roast
• Steeping time: 2.5 minutes
• Flavor: Balanced, chocolate, lingering caramel sweetness in the aftertaste

FrontStreet Coffee's recommended method: 15g of coffee, Fuji grinder ghost tooth blade setting 4, steep in 88°C water for 2.5 minutes, press, filter, and pour out the coffee.

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Honduran coffee like the San Juan Shido above is roasted medium-dark to bring out nutty, chocolate and balanced notes, and FrontStreet Coffee offers a range of beans at that same roast level for drinkers who prefer an even cup. If you dislike both acidity and bitterness, FrontStreet's Brazilian Queen's Estate is a natural pick. It comes from Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer, and is the distinctive Yellow Bourbon variety: mellow and gently sweet, and after medium roasting it shows aromas and sweetness of cream, peanut, chocolate, toasted bread and sugarcane. It works as a pour-over and also in a moka pot or espresso machine.

For a medium roast with a sweeter, more fruit-driven lift, FrontStreet's Strawberry Candy Gesha Blend is the first choice. It is unusual because it combines two well-known origins—a honey-processed coffee from Costa Rica and a washed Gesha from Panama—and FrontStreet gives it a medium roast to draw out both orange-blossom honey notes and a rounded sweetness, suitable for cold brew, pour-over and espresso alike, refreshing from the first sip. FrontStreet's 2013 Natural Typica, meanwhile, represents Chinese specialty coffee with the authentic character of Yunnan smallholder beans; to preserve its balanced, gentle tone FrontStreet roasts it medium, giving soft notes of nuts, brown sugar, black tea and dried apricot, and it can be used for pour-over, cold brew or a drip machine at very good value.

Finally, if what you want is the gold standard of balance, FrontStreet's Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 is worth the splurge. Jamaica's Blue Mountain is planted with the Typica variety, a world-renowned fine Arabica, and its exceptional geography is essential to its balanced flavor. This "king of coffees" is given a medium roast at FrontStreet, which fuses its distinctive acidity, bitterness, sweetness and body into an elegant, alluring whole; from the first sip you taste chocolate, roasted nuts, cream and caramel—roast-driven flavors that few other coffees can match.