Honduras Coffee Beans | Finca Los Sauces | Franklin Madrid | Pacas Variety Introduction

FrontStreet Coffee Single Origin Coffee Bean Recommendation - Honduras Sweet Orange Estate | Honduras San Juan Situo

Honduras Willow Estate | Franklin Madrid | Pacas Variety | Washed Process

Region: Franklin Madrid

Variety: Pacas

Processing Method: Washed

Flavor Description: The dry aroma shows citrus, lemon, orange, caramel, and roasted nuts. In the cup, refreshing fruit notes of grapefruit, orange, citrus, and orange peel come forward, with a smooth overall mouthfeel and excellent sweetness.

The San Vicente processing plant is in the town of Pena Blanca, in the Santa Barbara district north of Yojoa Lake in western Honduras. The plant buys cherries from smallholders in surrounding towns including El Cielito, Las Flores, and El Cedral — each of which has at least 35 families and a school. Their quantities are usually too small to be separated into individual lots, yet coffee from these areas has consistently amazed people with its high sweetness and fruity character.

Most local smallholders have grown coffee alongside their families since childhood, passing the skills down through generations. Local resources are scarce, and residents work hard all day just to earn a better living. Over the past five years, coffee lots from this area have repeatedly placed in the Honduras Cup of Excellence, giving producers here a real chance to improve their quality of life through high-quality coffee.

Pacas - Bourbon Varietal

Pacas is a natural mutation of Bourbon, much like Brazil's Caturra and Costa Rica's Villa Sarchi. Like other widely grown Bourbon mutations, Pacas arose from a single gene mutation, which gives it a crucial advantage: the plants can be spaced more densely, ultimately producing a higher yield per unit area.

Pacas was first discovered in 1949 by the Pacas family in the Santa Ana region of El Salvador. Fernando Alberto Pacas Figuero noticed plants with different morphological characteristics on the family's Finca San Rafael estate, then began collecting seeds and selecting and breeding them, eventually developing about 3/4 hectare of a Pacas "pioneer nursery."

The discoverer of Pacas, Fernando Alberto Pacas Figuero

By 1956, Francisco de Sola and Fernando's son — Fernando Alberto Pacas Trujillo — began researching the Pacas variety with help from the Florida professor William Cogwill. They compared San Ramon Bourbon with an "unknown" new variety, and the unknown type showed completely different characteristics: its morphology also differed from Bourbon, with shorter internodal spacing and larger fruiting areas. In the end they named it "Pacas."

Pacas, the coffee variety,

belongs to the Bourbon lineage —

that is, a mutation of Bourbon —

first discovered and selected around 1949 in El Salvador, where Bourbon was mostly grown.

Its biggest morphological differences from Bourbon are a shorter plant, clustered fruit, and high yield,

yet its flavor performance is far superior to its close relative nicknamed dwarf Bourbon —

Caturra!

For this reason it is often used as a parent in breeding;

the most famous case is its hybrid offspring with Maragogype —

Pacamara.

Flavor Characteristics: Floral notes, peach, cherry, orange, passion fruit, melon, pineapple, and ripe mango aroma, with high clarity and a smooth mouthfeel.

Pacas Roasting Method: Medium-Dark Roast

The aim is sweet, rich flavors without harshness — trading a little acidity for a solid, sweet aftertaste. Though not abundant, the cup keeps its regional character and the nectar-like quality that dark roasting brings, which is the hallmark of roasting Pacas.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Washing is the traditional way of using water to process coffee fruit. The steps generally run: flotation, depulping, a soak-and-ferment stage to remove the mucilage, washing or further soaking, then drying and hulling. Because washed beans spend so long in water, chemical changes take place inside them and much of the monosaccharides — fructose and glucose — are consumed, lowering the coffee's sugar content while raising its various organic acids. Washed coffee therefore keeps more of the bean's own aroma while carrying bright fruit acidity and a clean, fresh character.

FrontStreet's Yirgacheffe Gudin Ding Cooperative is one example: local farmers produce small volumes, so they bring their cherries to a cooperative for centralized processing, and Gudin Ding is an outstanding team from Gudin Ding village whose skilled handling yields an especially refined, clean cup. Its washed process draws out jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity to the fullest, and a medium-light roast adds green tea and honey tones, suiting pour-over, cold brew, and espresso alike. For the best-known example of the method, look to FrontStreet's Kenya Cherry Tomato: Kenya excels at double-washing green coffee, repeating the washing step through cycles of flotation, soaking, and rinsing to clear the mucilage before drying and hulling. All that rinsing pushes the juicy quality to its peak, with cherry tomato, smoked plum, snow pear, black plum, and brown sugar notes — sweet, tart, and juicy, and a favorite of many coffee drinkers.

FrontStreet's Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 shows why the method endures. Jamaica's island climate brings shorter sunshine hours than many origins and a constant risk of beans spoiling, and washing was the answer: the key difference from natural processing is that the skin, pulp, and mucilage are removed before drying, cutting the moisture trapped around the bean and shortening drying time to yield translucent beans with a low defect rate. That is what makes Blue Mountain so aromatic in the cup — hazelnut, cream, chocolate, and caramel — with a balanced body in which no note dominates or falls short.