What Makes Costa Rican Coffee Unique in Taste? Is Costa Rica Diamond Yellow Honey Better in Flavor?

Professional coffee knowledge exchange. For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style).

FrontStreet Coffee's Introduction to Costa Rican Diamond Yellow Honey

Costa Rica ranks third from the bottom in land area among Central American countries, but due to its extreme emphasis on coffee industry development, Costa Rica possesses coffee cultivation and processing techniques that cannot be surpassed by major coffee-producing countries worldwide.

What's most admirable is its creation of the honey processing method. (For details, you can refer to this article: Coffee Processing Methods Mini-Class | Semi-Dry Processing Pulped-Natural & Honey Processing)

(Three processing methods: Yellow Honey, Red Honey, and Black Honey)

Honey processing involves removing the fruit skin while keeping the golden mucilage attached to the coffee beans. By continuously controlling factors like fermentation time during honey processing, the coffee flavor becomes more distinctive while also developing excellent sweetness, exhibiting honey-like color and taste.

Honey processing, improved from Brazil's semi-dry processing method, has become popular among coffee-producing countries in Central and South America. Its characteristic is allowing beans to fully absorb the fruity aroma and sugar essence from the coffee mucilage layer during processing, resulting in a taste that's sweet as sugar and honey, like kissing your partner's lips.

Costa Rica's honey processing craftsmanship is quite exquisite and has garnered considerable attention in recent years. Therefore, I've been searching for a specialty bean that could truly conquer me: it must possess the mild and smooth balanced characteristics of Costa Rican coffee, with jam-like sweet aromas upon entry, while having subtle fermented acidity. The middle section should fully display the unique nutty flavors of Costa Rican beans, and to express good body, it's best to finish with an elegant red tea undertone.

Las Lajas Estate is located in the Central Valley region, which has the longest history of coffee cultivation in Costa Rica. At an altitude of 1,500 meters, near volcanic soil, it has been established for over 80 years and is one of the earliest estates in Costa Rica to systematically study honey processing techniques.

The Diamond Yellow Honey processing technique is extremely meticulous: after removing the coffee fruit skin, the parchment beans are moved to African raised beds and exposed to direct sunlight for 2-3 days, turning them every 2 hours. Then the beans are placed on cement floors in shaded drying areas, spread in a thickness of 15-20cm for drying. After drying every 2 hours during the day, they are covered with plastic for 2 hours of fermentation, and the beans are turned after fermentation to ensure those at the bottom can breathe fresh air, repeating this cycle; at night, the beans are piled into mountains and covered with thick black plastic. After 10-15 days, when the bean moisture drops to 11%, they are bagged but not sealed, placed in the warehouse, and once the coffee fruits have cooled down, they are sealed and stored with GrainPro and plastic bags.

Knowledge Point: In 1989, Costa Rica passed legislation prohibiting domestic cultivation of Robusta and subsequently began to restrict and phase out the Catimor variety as well.

In short: FrontStreet Coffee is a specialty coffee research hall that loves to share coffee knowledge with everyone. Our unconditional sharing is aimed at helping more friends fall in love with coffee. Additionally, we hold three discounted coffee events each month, because FrontStreet Coffee wants to let more friends enjoy the best coffee at the lowest price, which has been FrontStreet Coffee's mission for the past 6 years!

END

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473