Characteristics of El Salvador Coffee Beans - Introduction to El Salvador Coffee Beans - Specialty Coffee

Although it is the smallest country in Central America, El Salvador has numerous coffee-producing regions. In recent years, some high-quality Salvadoran specialty coffees have appeared on the market, leaving a deep impression on people. Now, please follow FrontStreet Coffee as we explore the world of Salvadoran coffee together.

The Coffee Story of El Salvador

FrontStreet Coffee's research found that coffee cultivation in El Salvador can be traced back to the mid-18th century, and its coffee industry has intricate connections with the country's development.

During the colonial period, indigo, as a natural dye, was the first agricultural product in El Salvador's history, generally obtained by processing the leaves of a plant called "Jiquilite." Indigo production occupied most of El Salvador's time throughout the 18th century, but with the European Industrial Revolution promoting the synthetic dye industry, this traditional production process quickly fell behind.

According to relevant records, coffee was introduced to El Salvador between 1779 and 1796, with the first coffee trees planted on the land of two farmers from Ahuachapán. Although coffee entered El Salvador as early as the 18th century, it was not until the mid-19th century that the government decided to take measures to support and promote coffee cultivation in the country. In the 1930s and 1940s, driven by credit policies favorable to coffee growers, the entire coffee industry gained strong development momentum, with coffee accounting for more than 90% of El Salvador's agricultural exports.

Since 1857, coffee cultivation has also expanded to the entire territory of El Salvador, starting from Ahuachapán, then spreading to Santa Ana and Sonsonate, then introduced to the western part of San Vicente, the Berlín mountainous area, and near the Volcán Chaparrastique in San Miguel. Today, large areas of coffee plants are found throughout El Salvador and have become the main agricultural product for many local farmers.

The modernization of coffee cultivation in El Salvador began with high price stimulation in the 1950s. Farmers first intercropped coffee trees with other crops for shade cultivation, while also beginning to use fertilizers and appropriately increase planting density to concentrate on improving productivity. In this way, El Salvador became the world's fifth-largest coffee producer and fourth-largest coffee exporter in the mid-1970s, with harvests reaching as high as 5 million quintals.

However, from the 1980s to the 1990s, El Salvador experienced a civil war. Many individual farmers were subjected to military pressure from guerrillas and the army, coffee sales and exports were forced to be nationalized, and farmers had to stop investing in their farms. This caused a sharp decline in El Salvador's coffee production and prices between 1997 and 2001. According to ICO data records, the country's coffee production decreased by more than 34% during this period. In 2013, coffee leaf rust began to spread nationwide. Only 3% of coffee trees planted in El Salvador were rust-resistant varieties, so the harvest season in 2014 saw a production decline of nearly 60%.

It was not until 2014 that the agricultural management department, led by Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Lic. Orestes Ortéz, decided to reactivate coffee cultivation, creating a specialized CENTA coffee department to strengthen scientific and technological foundation support. The department has a team of 80 technical personnel, guided by Salvadoran coffee cultivation expert Dr. Adán Hernández, not only providing fungicides to prevent coffee tree rust problems but also cultivating new varieties with strong rust resistance to provide to farmers, allowing coffee farmers to renovate their plantations and improve quality and yield.

El Salvador Coffee Regions and Varieties

According to statistics, El Salvador's current coffee area is over 130,000 hectares, of which about half are low-altitude coffee plantations, 33% belong to medium-high altitude coffee, and the remaining 16% are high-altitude coffee. Among them, 85% of growers are small farmers with less than 7 hectares, with only a small portion of cultivation area exceeding 7 hectares.

El Salvador has nine major coffee-producing regions: Apaneca, Apaneca Llamatepec, El Balsamo-Quetzaltepec, Cacahuatique, and Santa Ana in the southwest; Chalatenango, Chichontepec, and Metapan in the north-central region; and Tecapa-Chinameca, scattered along the river valleys.

Although Typica was the earliest Arabica variety widely planted in El Salvador, due to the impact of leaf rust, most farms later switched to Bourbon coffee starting in the 19th century. By the mid-20th century, Bourbon coffee mutated to produce Pacas, which was traced through lineage by ISIC and vigorously promoted for cultivation. Today, Bourbon and its variant Pacas have become the main varieties popular in El Salvador's coffee plantations. Among them, Bourbon accounts for more than 60% of cultivation, while Pacas also accounts for nearly a quarter of the country's coffee production.

However, compared to these two common coffee varieties, the representative that has qualified for El Salvador's COE (Cup of Excellence) with its high-quality flavor is Pacamara, which has gained increasing fame in recent years. As a large-sized coffee bean, it was hybridized and released by the Salvadoran Coffee Research Institute (ISIC) from Pacas from El Salvador and the Typica variant Maragogype from Brazil. This variety not only has the excellent taste of Pacas but also inherits the large size characteristic of Maragogype in its raw beans. In terms of flavor, it has lively and bright acidity, sometimes with biscuit notes, sometimes with a juicy texture, and excellent thickness and mouthfeel.

FrontStreet Coffee: El Salvador Pacamara Coffee Beans

Region: Sonsonate Izalco region

Estate: Finca Ataisi Estate

Grade: SHG

Altitude: 1800 meters

Variety: Pacamara

Processing Method: Washed

Flavor: Nuts, chocolate, cream, strawberry jam, passion fruit

El Salvador Coffee Flavor Characteristics

FrontStreet Coffee's Brewing Recommendations

Dripper: V60

Water Temperature: 90°C

Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15

Grind Size: Fine sugar (80% pass-through rate with China #20 standard sieve)

Pour the coffee grounds into the V60 dripper, wet the coffee bed with twice the amount of water as the coffee grounds to form a dome and bloom for 30 seconds. Then use a small water stream to pour in concentric circles from inside to out to 125g, wait until the coffee bed drops to half the height of the dripper, continue with the same fine water stream to inject the third stage to 225g, and remove the dripper when all the coffee liquid has filtered through, taking about 2 minutes.

FrontStreet Coffee tasted this Pacamara coffee through pour-over extraction: the entrance is very delicate and silky, with clear and soft fruit acidity sliding across the tongue surface. Like all Pacamara characteristics, it is quiet and gentle. The middle section has fresh wild berry fruit acidity and nutty hazelnut aroma. The tail section has obvious caramel sweetness, with a long and delicate sweet aftertaste and persistent sweet return.

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