Peru El Romerillo

Luis Abarca is a young, second generation coffee farmer, who started planting coffee in 2017 when he inherited land from his father. He started planting caturra and bourbon, as, at that time they were considered the two best varieties in the area.

Over the last few years Luis has been experimenting the processing of his different varieties with controlled fermentations for both washed and natural processing styles. Luis makes mosto, cultures he makes from small batches of both pulped and natural coffee, which he then uses to inoculate batches of coffee. For his washed coffees, the coffee cherries are pulped are placed in bioreactors which Luis himself adapts from food grade plastic tanks, along with mosto and then fermented for a period of approximately 72 hours, with regular measurements of pH and brix to see how the fermentation is progressing. All of this is done under natural pressure created by gases released from fermentation. After fermentation the coffee is pre-dried in the sun for a couple of hours to remove excess moisture before being placed on raised beds inside a parabolic dryer for approximately 15 days. The result from what we taste is vibrant and fresh fruit-like acidity in the cup. The tartness comes with dense sweetness to balance the overall cup.

This is the first time we bought coffees from Luis and we look forward to more coffees from him in his upcoming harvest.