Salvadoran Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations - Rich and Diverse Flavor Profile of Pacamara Coffee Beans

FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to Salvadoran Coffee

Salvadoran coffee, alongside Mexican and Guatemalan coffee, belongs to the Arabica-Mild group and is vying with its neighbors for the top one or two spots in Central America. Highland coffees here come as uniformly sized large beans with a rich yet gentle profile. Like Guatemala and Costa Rica, El Salvador grades its coffee by altitude - the higher, the better. By elevation there are three grades: SHB (strictly high grown) = highland, HEC (high grown central) = mid-highland, and CS (central standard) = lowland.

Salvadoran specialty coffee clusters in the Santa Ana volcanic region in the west and the Chalatenango volcanic region in the northwest. In recent years, nearly every top-ten finisher in cupping competitions has come from these two areas, at altitudes of roughly 900-1,500 meters. Bourbon is the dominant variety (68%), followed by Pacas (29%), while the Pacamara hybrid, Durrae, and Caturra together make up just 3%.

The flavor of Salvadoran beans is elevated by washed processing, which yields cleaner flavors with bright acidity and aroma. Washing has been the hallmark of high-end coffee for over two hundred years now. The result is superior coffee that enters the mouth as smooth as milk chocolate, trailed by nutty and honeyed notes - best savored alongside a dessert, a pairing that lifts the cup into something ethereal.

Pacamara is a hybrid variety developed in El Salvador in the 1950s by crossing Pacas (a natural Bourbon mutation) with the large-beaned Maragogype, the "Elephant Bean."

It was first cultivated by Salvadoran researchers in 1958, and Pacamara is that rare gem of artificial selection - a variety that surpasses both parents. It inherits Pacas's excellent flavor and Maragogype's enormous bean size: the beans run at least 70-80% the size of Elephant Beans, with 100% reaching screen size 17 and 90% reaching screen size 18. Average bean length is 1.03 cm (versus 0.8-0.85 cm for ordinary beans), average width 0.71 cm (versus 0.6-0.65 cm), and thickness 0.37 cm - full, round beans all around.

The variety's most striking trait is its lively, sophisticated acidity - at times biscuity, at times fruit-driven - set against an excellent body and mouthfeel. The finest Pacamara comes from El Salvador and Guatemala.

Knowledge point: El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America by area, yet one of the most efficient coffee producers in the world.

Summary

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

FrontStreet's own washed specialty lineup is a great place to taste what washing does for a cup. The Yirgacheffe Guodingding Cooperative lot shows the style at its most elegant - jasmine florals, bright citrus acidity, and green tea and honey tones after a medium-light roast - while FrontStreet's Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1 demonstrates washed processing's cleaner side with hazelnut, cream, chocolate, and caramel in a perfectly balanced cup.