Guatemala Little Blueberry Estate Introduction to Pacamara

FrontStreet Coffee - Guatemala Little Blueberry Estate Pacamara Introduction

Guatemala Little Blueberry Estate

Country: Guatemala

Region: New Oriente

Altitude: 1550-1800M

Processing Method: Natural Process

Grade: SHB

Variety: Pacamara

Regional Introduction

Guatemala sits in Central America with a singular geographic setting: it links to North America in the north, touches South America in the south, and faces the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Its climate runs humid and hot, making it one of the world's important coffee producers.

Living in the tropics, Guatemala is dotted with volcanoes. The northern and eastern coastal plains have a tropical rainforest climate, while the southern mountains are subtropical. The year splits into a wet season from May to October and a dry season from November through April. Annual precipitation ranges from 2,000-3,000 millimeters in the northeast and 500-1,000 millimeters in the south.

Forests cover half the country, and the latitude is ideal for coffee. Because coffee is a key economic crop here, a rich coffee culture has grown around it: people drink coffee daily, and most include a cup with lunch.

New Oriente

New Oriente is the youngest of Guatemala's eight coffee regions. Rainfall is abundant and cloud cover lingers year-round. In ancient times this was volcanic terrain, and the soil-formed of metamorphic rock-is rich in minerals.

Before coffee arrived, New Oriente was one of Guatemala's poorest regions. Starting in the 1950s, mountain farmers put the naturally fertile land to work planting coffee. The area gradually flourished and now stands as a rising star in the country's coffee industry.

Little Blueberry Estate - El Morita

Little Blueberry Estate is among the highest-altitude and most remarkable farms in all of Guatemala. Its owner runs the farm with professional rigor, pushing coffee cultivation up to 2,300 meters and testing the limits of what Arabica can do-higher altitude, the thinking goes, produces better flavor. In recent years the estate has shown exceptional strength in competitions.

Because the farm sits so high, you have to pass through two cloud layers to reach it. The cold climate nurtures exceptionally resilient fruit and, with it, outstanding coffee flavors.

Varieties on the estate include Pache San Ramon, Catuaí, Bourbon, Maragogipe, Pacamara, Maracatu, and Geisha. The owner plants each variety in its own section of the farm, and each shows slightly different flavors and mouthfeel.

The estate is also a decorated farm in the Cup of Excellence (COE) competition:

• 2013 Cup of Excellence - 2nd place

• 2014 Cup of Excellence - 3rd place

• 2015 Cup of Excellence - 2nd place

• 2016 Cup of Excellence - 9th place

• 2017 Cup of Excellence - 4th place

• 2018 Cup of Excellence - 3rd place

Honey Processing

Honey processing is a refinement of natural processing. The key difference from a full natural is that the skin and pulp are removed before sun drying, while the mucilage layer stays on the beans as they dry in the sun.

1. Removing Floating Beans (as in natural processing, though some regions skip this step)

Beans are poured into large water tanks. Underdeveloped, low-quality cherries float to the surface while mature, full fruits sink. The floaters are skimmed off, completing the sorting.

2. Removing Skin and Pulp (as in washed processing)

A pulping machine strips the outer skin and pulp from the fruit, leaving the mucilage, parchment, and silver skin.

3. Sun Drying

The mucilage-coated beans are spread out on drying grounds for direct sun exposure until the moisture content falls to 10-14%.

4. Removing Mucilage and Parchment

Special machinery removes the remaining mucilage and parchment, completing the process.

Pacamara

Pacamara is a cross of Pacas and Maragogype, discovered in El Salvador in 1950.

First cultivated by Salvadoran researchers in 1958, Pacamara is a rare, outstanding variety developed through artificial selection. It pairs the excellent mouthfeel of Pacas with the sheer size of Maragogype-the beans run at least 70-80% the size of elephant beans. The variety's most distinctive trait is its lively, sharp acidity, sometimes edged with biscuit aroma, sometimes with fruit fragrance, backed by excellent thickness and an oily sensation.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Natural-style drying is the oldest way to process coffee, and to taste what leaving the fruit on the bean can do, try FrontStreet's Brazil Fazenda Rainha (Empress Estate). While most of Brazil uses pulped natural processing, the Empress Estate dries its cherries whole on raised racks, turning them constantly so every cherry meets the sun, then finishes with mechanical drying to reach the target moisture. Brewed as a pour-over, French press, or drip bag, it serves up the fresh sweetness of sugarcane juice, black tea, smooth fruit sweetness, and pronounced nutty flavors with a whisper of clean bitterness-plus a rich chocolate aroma, a bright and refreshing cup, and a silky, delicate texture. It is a stable, long-keeping bean and an easy everyday choice for anyone who enjoys full, sun-dried fruit character with balanced sweetness.