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Nicaragua Coffee - Bosawas Estate Information and Story

Processing Plant Introduction

Cafetos de Segovia micro-batch processing plant belongs to the second-generation sisters Ana and Martha Albir of the Albir family, who inherited their passion for coffee from their father. The Albir family bought a coffee farm in 1991, until political disputes forced them to leave the country and stop the farm's daily operations. In 2007, Ana and Martha decided to take the farm back over and continue their father's work. In 2015 they also invested in a processing plant, and began processing coffee at Cafetos de Segovia in 2016, providing processing and export services not only for their own family farm but for 11 nearby farms as well.

Origin Introduction

The Nueva Segovia region and its surrounding hills lie on the northwestern border between Honduras and Nicaragua. Of all Nicaragua's coffee-producing regions, Nueva Segovia is one of the smallest, yet the flavor of coffee from Segovia is excellent. Nicaragua has grown coffee commercially for over a century, but political and economic instability kept it off the radar of most coffee professionals. In recent years, plantations taken over during the Nicaraguan Revolution have been returned to local families, and Nicaragua is working to establish itself as a distinctive coffee-producing country.

Caturra and Catuai Coffee Varieties

Caturra

Caturra's taste is full of fruitiness, with the acidity of berries - somewhat complex and sharp, and a finish loaded with blueberry notes. The raw beans look hard and green, and that is Caturra's most distinctive characteristic.

Caturra is a single-gene variant of Bourbon, discovered in Brazil in 1937. Both its yield capacity and its disease resistance beat Bourbon's, and the plant is shorter, which makes harvesting easier. Unfortunately, like Bourbon, it suffers from biennial yield fluctuations. Its flavor is comparable to Bourbon's, or slightly inferior. More importantly, it adapts extremely well, needing no shade trees - it thrives even in direct, intense sunlight, which is why it is commonly called "Sun Coffee." It tolerates high-density planting, but that calls for more fertilizer and raises costs, so farmers were initially slow to accept it.

During the 1970s, when coffee prices rose sharply, farmers switched to Caturra to increase yields. Vigorous promotion by the Brazilian and Colombian authorities paid off. Farmers accepting Caturra meant a major shift in cultivation technique, and Brazil and Colombia moved to high-yield, high-density sun-exposed cultivation. By 1990, one million hectares could harvest 14 million bags of coffee beans, a 60% increase in production capacity. No wonder high-yield, high-quality Caturra has become a variety that producing countries rely on today.

Caturra suits cultivation from as low as 700 meters up to 1700 meters. It adapts well to altitude, but the higher it grows, the better the flavor, while yield capacity falls relatively - the fate of specialty beans. Some in academia call Caturra the intensive, sun-exposed version of Bourbon, which is quite insightful. There is also a yellow Caturra variant (Caturra Amarello) in Central and South America, but its reputation does not match Yellow Bourbon's.

Lightly roasted, Caturra has obvious acidity and overall brightness, and if processed well, its sweetness comes through very clearly. Compared with Bourbon, however, its body is relatively lower and the cleanliness of the mouthfeel is somewhat lacking.

Catuai

Catuai raw beans are relatively soft, with a sweet taste and less astringency - as if everything scores only 65 points. Brazil has promoted it strongly, but so far without notable success.

Catuai is also an Arabica hybrid, a cross between Mundo Novo and Caturra. It resists natural disasters better, especially wind and rain. It inherits Caturra's advantage of short plant height, overcoming Mundo Novo's weakness, and it has another advantage in solid fruit set - the cherries do not easily fall off in strong wind, compensating for Arabica's fragile fruit. Its overall flavor, though, is more monotonous than Caturra's and more monotonous than Mundo Novo's, while also lacking body, which is its greatest regret. Its fruit growth and harvesting lifespan is only about ten years, another shortcoming.

Catuai also divides into red fruit (Catuai Vermelho) and yellow fruit (Catuai Amarello). Both colors exist, but so far no yellow fruit has been found to taste better than red. On the contrary, some cuppers have found that although coffee processed from yellow fruit can have good acidity, its mouthfeel cleanliness is worse than red fruit's. Statistically, red-fruit Catuai wins awards more often.

Because Caturra yields heavily and resists pests and disease but tastes poor and lacks flavor, Catuai was developed from it to correct those faults - though it ends up seeming a little too balanced.

Washed Process Introduction

The washed process was developed in response to the drawbacks of traditional natural processing. Harvested cherries first pass through a depulper, which separates most of the pulp from the beans, and are then guided into a clean water tank where they soak and ferment to remove the remaining pulp layer completely. Once fermentation is finished, they are dried by sun or machine until moisture drops to 12%. Because the washed process removes the pulp first, there is none of the mold or insect risk that drying natural coffee involves.

(Above: the depulper removing pulp; fermentation in water; the beans spread flat for drying.)

Natural process coffee is rich and full with very distinct, diverse layers, while washed process coffee is very clean and refreshing with obvious fruit acidity. Different processing methods give beans their own unique aromas.

Flavor Description

A lactic fermentation acidity, bringing grape and brown sugar flavors, an Earl Grey tea texture and an uplifting sweetness in the aftertaste.

Roasting Recommendations and Analysis

Recommended brewing equipment: pour-over, French press, siphon.

Brewing Analysis

Today we share FrontStreet Coffee's usual method for hand-pouring Nicaragua coffee: the V60 three-pour technique.

Segmented extraction, dividing all the brewing water into three pours.

Suitable for light roast, medium-light roast and medium roast coffee beans.

Use a V60 dripper.

Increasing bloom time or the number of water breaks can enhance the richness of the coffee's taste.

The three-pour technique of segmented extraction.

Advantages: more layered than a single pour, and it lets you clearly distinguish the front, middle and back-end flavors of the coffee. The method is to increase the amount of water poured each time after the bloom, usually pouring when the coffee liquid is about to drop to the surface of the coffee bed, using small, medium and large flows for three stages.

Disadvantages: it places relatively high demands on flow rate and volume control.

FrontStreet Coffee's Nicaragua Pour-Over Parameter Recommendations

Using a V60 dripper enhances the layered flavors of pour-over, making it taste richer and cleaner, and it perfectly expresses the rich floral and fruity aromas of Nicaragua coffee with its soft, fruit-like acidity.

15g of coffee, water at 89-90°C, grind BG 5R (Chinese standard 20-mesh screen pass rate 64%), coffee-to-water ratio close to 1:15.

Method: 30g of water for the bloom, bloom time 30s. Pour the hot water clockwise in circles centered on the middle of the dripper. Start timing when brewing begins, pour to 30g, then stop and wait 30 seconds for the first pour.

For the first pour, circle as before but slightly more slowly, speeding up a little on the outer circle. Stop pouring at around 1:15. When the liquid level drops by 1/3, pour again. The second pour should concentrate on the center, and the water flow should not hit the join between coffee powder and filter paper, to avoid channeling. End extraction at around 2:05. The tail section can be omitted (the longer the time, the more astringency and rough texture appear).

Segments: 30-125-230g.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The V60 rewards a coffee that can show layered acidity and clear aromatics, which is exactly what FrontStreet's fruit-forward lots are built for. FrontStreet Ethiopia Hua Kui is the natural-process showcase: its tropical fruit aroma is extremely prominent, often reading as strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit and even lychee, with obvious sweetness and very low bitterness. FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Gedingding covers the washed side - clean, transparent lemon and citrus with elegant white florals and a green tea-like finish.

If you want something that behaves like a bigger, rounder cup, FrontStreet Papua New Guinea Bird of Paradise comes from the Sigri region and the Bird of Paradise estate, grown at 1600-1800 meters on volcanic soil from the same Typica lineage as Blue Mountain, with plump beans, a very low defect rate and a triple washed fermentation that keeps the cup clean and the sweetness high. FrontStreet's own preference for the V60 is the resin version: besides being light and durable, resin effectively blocks heat loss, and in standard industrial production it is the easiest material to mold with the smallest tolerances.