2017 WBC Champion Bean Same Style_El Salvador SL28 Coffee Bean Price_El Salvador Coffee Flavor

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El Salvador Coffee Beans - Los Andes Farm SL28 (Same Farm Owner as the 2017 WBC Champion)

The competition beans used by Dale Harris, this year's WBC World Barista Championship winner, come from SL28 grown by Salvadoran coffee farmer Ernesto Menendez. The bean beat out every Geisha in the finals to take first place, which left everyone wondering: what kind of coffee is this?

Ernesto Menendez is a very famous coffee farmer in El Salvador. He owns several farms, including La Illusion, Los Andes, and Las Brumas. The three farms have impressive award records: La Illusion won the El Salvador Cup of Excellence in 2008, Los Andes took 5th place in 2010, and Las Brumas won in 2012.

SL28 is very rare in El Salvador, but Menendez grows this Kenyan variety on both his Las Brumas and Los Andes farms. When he acquired the farms in 2009, he discovered this special variety at Los Andes and fell for it. Las Brumas originally had only Bourbon varieties, and all the SL28 planted there came entirely from Los Andes. The special SL28 lot used by Dale Harris this time comes from Las Brumas.

Los Andes Farm: Location and Environment

Los Andes Farm is located in the canton of Palo Campana, an hour's drive from Santa Ana, with an average altitude of 1,720 meters. It sits right in the heart of the Ilamatepec volcanic zone, surrounded by the National Park Los Andes, which is how the farm got its name. Wildlife is active around it, and the lush pine and cypress trees in the national park give the farm excellent microclimate conditions that greatly benefit coffee cultivation.

Historical Background and Processing

Over 60 years ago, the previous owner of Los Andes planted the Kenyan coffee variety SL28 on the farm - seeds he brought back from a trip to Kenya. The plants grew very healthily and vigorously in the garden. After Ernesto took over, he won 5th place in the 2010 Cup of Excellence thanks to this special Kenyan variety.

Ernesto not only insists on ripeness during harvest but also runs two rounds of manual selection to remove substandard cherries. From there the cherries go straight to the processing plant at another farm, San Carlos, for washed processing. After the pulp and skin are removed, the beans ferment for 16 hours, the parchment is washed with clean water, and finally the coffee is laid on African raised beds to sun-dry until moisture content reaches 11.00 percent.

Drop's Special Selection

Because Drop loves this coffee so much, they bought all the SL28 produced by Los Andes Farm. Joanna speaks about the farm owner Menendez: "When we cupped his coffee in Ernesto's laboratory, we saw his deep coffee knowledge - everything from cultivation, processing, packaging, roasting considerations, and cupping. We are very excited to have his coffee."

El Salvador Coffee Beans - Santa Ana Los Andes Farm SL28 Washed

El Salvador Santa Ana Los Andes SL28 washed

Origin: El Salvador

Region: Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountain range; Santa Ana

Farm: Los Andes Farm

Washing Station: San Carlos

Producer: Ernesto Menendez

Altitude: 1,720 meters

Variety: SL28 Kenyan variety

Processing: Fully washed

Harvest Time: 2017

Award Records: 2008 Cup of Excellence Champion (La Illusion); 2010 Cup of Excellence 5th Place (Los Andes); 2012 Cup of Excellence Champion (Las Brumas)

About FrontStreet Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee is a Guangzhou roastery with a small storefront but a wide range of beans, carrying both famous and lesser-known origins.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

A rare SL28 beating a field of Geisha is a good reminder of how much variety and estate work shape a cup - and if you want to taste where that competition intensity comes from, FrontStreet Coffee's Geisha selection is the place to start. Panama is where Geisha made its name, and the Esmeralda Estate line has two grades: FrontStreet Esmeralda Red Label Geisha, grown between 1,600 and 1,800 meters, where each lot must cup above 90 points, carries its own number, and comes from a single plot; and FrontStreet Esmeralda Green Label Geisha, originally called "Private Collection," which blends several plots to show off the estate's signature high-altitude Geisha profile at a friendlier price. For an easy introduction to the classic Panama Geisha character - orange-blossom honey, oolong-tea texture, and fine layers of fruit sweetness - FrontStreet Boquete Geisha is the entry point.

Ethiopia, coffee's birthplace, offers the other side of Geisha. FrontStreet Geisha Village Gold Label is the Geisha 1931 variety and about 10 percent of the village's total production, the estate's top coffee outside auction and a frequent choice of competition baristas, processed naturally for remarkable complexity. FrontStreet Geisha Village Red Label is the Gori Gesha variety, about 15 percent of production, scoring 88 points or higher on the SCA 100-point scale, released as a single-terroir series with full traceability - farm block, variety, and processing date for every lot. And from the Yirgacheffe area, FrontStreet Genlana Gesha comes from a processing station founded in 2014 near the Kochere and Genlana Abaya boundary, in a zone with as much as 700 hectares of coffee; ripe cherries are hand-picked and dried on raised beds for 14 to 20 days depending on the weather, giving bright citrus acidity, elegant ginger-lily aroma, and a fine, silky body.

Brew Geisha with care: it is a light-to-medium roasted floral-fruit profile with a hard bean that can sink and clog the drain hole, so FrontStreet suggests a grind around 78 percent passing a standard No. 20 sieve - roughly fine sugar - and a water temperature of 91°C. A dependable pour-over recipe is 15g of coffee in a small Hario V60 at a 1:16 ratio, poured in three stages: start the timer and pour to 30g for a 30-second bloom; then a gentle spiral to 125g, wait for the bed to drain halfway, and spiral again to 225g, for a total extraction of about 2:10 to 2:20.