El Salvador AIDA Dream Estate Bourbon Coffee Brewing Data Sharing_AIDA Dream Estate Story

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Salvadoran Coffee: AIDA Bourbon

Processing Method: Natural, medium-dark roast

Flavor Profile: Liqueur chocolate, walnut, chestnut

Origin: El Salvador, AIDA Selection Dream Estate

Altitude: 1400-1700 meters

Price: 88 yuan

Why we recommend it: Aida is the fifth-generation successor of Salvadoran Bourbon coffee. The estates she manages have won multiple COE awards, and the diversity and stability of their flavors are the best testament to their quality.

El Salvador lies in northwestern Central America, bordering the Pacific to the south, and is one of the birthplaces of ancient Mayan civilization. Its volcanoes, plateaus, lakes and Pacific beach resorts are all pleasant to the eye. What makes El Salvador world-renowned, though, is its distinctive, mild-flavored coffee.

Anyone familiar with Salvadoran coffee will have heard of the coffee from Finca Kilimanjaro, which won first place at the Cup of Excellence in 2003. It also set a record for Salvadoran coffee trading prices at $14.06 per pound, at a time when the local price in El Salvador was less than $1 per pound. The person behind that magical place, Finca Kilimanjaro, is the woman who stands behind Salvadoran specialty coffee: Aida Batlle.

Aida Batlle is the successor of Salvadoran Bourbon coffee, the fifth generation of the Batlle family's coffee estates. Besides Finca Kilimanjaro, her estates include Finca Los Alpes, Finca Mauritania and Finca Tanzania; Finca Los Alpes also placed 16th at the 2003 Cup of Excellence.

Central American coffees often carry rich chocolate notes, but the coffees from Batlle's estates have the deep sweetness judges look for, along with what professionals describe as brightness, the fruit-related acidity.

How to Brew Salvadoran Coffee [AIDA Dream Estate Bourbon] Perfectly

FrontStreet Coffee's pour-over reference: Weigh 15 g of [AIDA Dream Estate Bourbon] coffee grounds and grind to a medium coarseness. The particles should be slightly coarser than table salt. We use BG grinder setting 5R (60 percent standard sieve pass rate), water at 89°C, and extract with a V60 dripper.

Pour hot water from the gooseneck kettle in clockwise circles centered on the middle of the dripper, starting the timer when brewing begins. Brew to 30 g in 15 seconds, then stop pouring. When the clock reaches 1 minute, begin the second pour. For the second pour, as before, pour in clockwise circles centered on the middle of the dripper. Avoid pouring where the grounds meet the filter paper, to prevent channeling.

When you reach the outermost ring of the coffee bed, leave a small gap, then continue circle by circle toward the center. At 2 minutes 20 seconds the coffee should be brewed to 220 g. The process is complete.

Japanese-Style Iced Pour-Over [AIDA Dream Estate Bourbon]

FrontStreet Coffee's iced pour-over [AIDA Dream Estate Bourbon] reference:

Salvadoran coffee [AIDA Dream Estate Bourbon], medium roast, BG grinder setting 5M (67 percent standard sieve pass rate).

20 g of coffee grounds, 150 g of ice cubes, 150 g of hot water. The water temperature should be 1°C higher than the normal pour-over recommendation of 89°C. Normal grinding uses a Fuji 3.5 setting, while iced pour-over calls for slightly finer grinding, a Fuji 3 setting.

Bloom with 40 g of water for 30 seconds.

Pour in stages: 60 g of water first, then 40 g. Use a relatively thin but tall water column, applying enough force to stir and agitate so the grounds roll fully. Be careful not to let the liquid level rise too high or touch the edge filter paper.

The entire extraction should take about 2.5 minutes (similar to the normal extraction time for 20 g of coffee grounds).

END

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Salvadoran Bourbon like this one sits comfortably in the medium and medium-dark range, where balance matters more than extremes. FrontStreet Coffee's medium-roast lineup is a good place to explore that style. The FrontStreet Brazil Queen Estate is a medium-roast Yellow Bourbon from Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer; it is clean and gently sweet, with notes of creamy peanut, chocolate, toast and sugarcane, and it brews well as pour-over, in a moka pot or through an espresso machine.

If you would prefer a sweeter, fruit-forward medium roast, the FrontStreet Strawberry Candy Geisha Blend combines a honey-processed Costa Rican coffee with a washed Panama Geisha. The medium roast keeps both the citrus-honey character and a rounded sweetness, and it is versatile enough for cold brew, pour-over and espresso.

Two more medium roasts round out the range. FrontStreet's Yunnan 2013 Natural Typica, a representative Chinese specialty coffee, keeps the traditional small-bean Yunnan character, and the medium roast brings out gentle notes of nuts, brown sugar, black tea and dried apricot; it suits pour-over, cold brew and drip machines. And the FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1, grown from Typica in Jamaica, is roasted medium to fuse its acidity, bitterness, sweetness and body into one elegant whole, with chocolate, roasted nut, cream and caramel arriving at the first sip.