Amarillo Guatemala is back at Barefoot Coffee Roasters, and I couldn’t be more excited.
For those of you who don’t know, this is a renown coffee produced by Finca El Socorro, whose focus on details results in incredibly high coffee quality. The rewards for their efforts speak for themselves: First Place in the Cup Of Excellence 2013, fourth place in past years; Coffee of the Year award at SCAA in 2012. Longtime friends and partners, Barefoot will continue to share their great coffees for years to come.
This year Juan Diego decided to combine all the yellow bourbon and caturra lots into one offering. This way he was able to infuse the intricacies of each of the yellow varietals into one resounding symphony of complex flavors.
Everything that Juan Diego does is of the utmost quality and with highest regard for the environment. Using the natural run off of from their creek, they are able to process their coffee with clean mountain water. They also recycle the coffee pulp into fertilizer for future plantings.
Biodiversity isn’t just a word, but a way of life. The El Socorro farm is located in Palencia, 50 kilometers away from Guatemala City and is in its the fourth generation of owners. Juan de la Cerda and his son Juan Diego are now in charge of producing one of the best coffees of Guatemala.
Finca El Socorro’s success is the result of a strict quality control throughout the whole process, from the management of the plantation, to the picking and the wet milling. The farm has an efficient ecological wet mill. It de-pulps coffee cherries dry, then transports the coffee and its pulp mechanically and recycles the water in the process. Then, the water is treated with clean production techniques, before allowing it back into the forest.
Welcome to my Table, here in the corner of this cafe. Today we’re sipping a cup of Amarillo Guatemala, from Barefoot Coffee Roasters in San Jose, California. Feel free to pull up a chair.
the basics:
region: Palencia, Fraijenes, Guatemala
farm: Finca El Socorro
producer: Juan Diego de la Cerda
association: N/A
elevation: 1700 meters above sea level
cultivars: Yellow Bourbon, Caturra
process: fully washed, patio dried
certifications: Direct Trade
the coffee:
The Amarillo Guatemala’s aroma is rich, layered, and refined. Really sweet aromatics of flowers, cake batter, brown sugar, and tropical fruits waft up and entice the nose, really drawing me in.
This cup starts off beautifully; bright and sweet with notes of savories, fruits, and flowers. Each sip comes in three stages—as the coffee splashes onto the tongue, it is immediately coated with a silky honeyed caramel flavor; as it slides toward the back of the throat, juicy dried fruits like apricot, pineapple, and banana sparkle on the middle and sides of the tongue; and, as each sip finishes, a sprinkling of brown sugar dusts the palate and a flutter of cherry and orange blossoms rises to the roof of the mouth.
As it cools, the bright fruit flavors intensify considerably and their inherent dryness totally melts and they become juicy and much livelier. The coffee actually gets a little hot and spicy; thick, syrupy rum carries sparkling, effervescent flavors of pineapple, spiced cherry, banana chips, star fruit, orange rind, and tart, creamy lemon meringue.
Medium body; silky mouthfeel; citrus acidity; clean finish.
the bottom line:
“Amarillo” is a fitting title for this coffee from the incredible Finca El Socorro as the Guatemala Amarillo, from Barefoot Coffee Roasters, is a bright and shiny cup that really sparkles all the way through.
Delicate and crisp with honeyed savories, tropical fruits, and floral fruit blossoms, this light to medium bodied coffee has a startling clarity, a fleshy, juicy acidity, and a sharp, clean finish that is sure to please the palate and entice the taste buds. However, as satisfying as this coffee is, it’s also a little bit challenging with brimming complexity.
2013 has been sort of an off year for Guatemalan coffees, as the quality and dynamic flavors that this region is so consistently renown for just haven’t been there. As a massive fan of the region, this has been pretty disappointing and frustrating for me. The Guatemala Amarillo, however, flies in the face of that and really outshines most of its Guatemalan peers.
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Andrew is a husband, father, dog lover, craft beverage enthusiast, content creator, and niche market Internet celebrity. Formerly of A Table in the Corner of the Cafe and The Pulitzer Project and contributor to Barista Magazine and Mental Floss, he’s been writing on the Internet for years.