New House Coffee - Las Brisas, Guatemala
We are so excited to announce the launch of our newest House coffee, one that we were lucky enough to select from our sourcing trip to South America back in February. This amazing lot is from Marvin Carias in Guatemala.
Guatemala
The land of volcanos. From the moment we landed in Guatemala City, it was very obvious this is a special place. The volcanos dominate the landscape and the climate is hot but not so intense as I’ve experienced further south.
The City itself is kind of nuts, very busy and hugely varied. Sadly, like many cities in the Americas it suffers from huge inequalities that are the result of such rapid growth and a lack of social mobility. With a population of over 3 million people and the biggest economy in Central America it felt intense and we were glad to meet Nadine and her team from Primavera to help us navigate the city.
Primavera are a speciality importer that prioritises quality, transparency and sustainability. They recently won the Speciality Coffee Association’s sustainability award for best business model so we knew we could find the right long-term producer through them. Before we’d even got on the plane Nadine had sent us samples from the region and we were keen to meet some of the producers whose coffees had stood out on the cupping table.
Finca Las Brisas
Marvin Carias first bought a parcel of land in this area in 1990 and has been adding to the farm ever since. Over the years he has improved the quality dramatically - replanting new trees while implementing shade management to protect the soil and coffee trees below it. Of course, we’d already tasted the quality so it was when Marvin started to talk about growing practices, water-cleaning & producing organic fertilser that I knew we were sold.
In recent years he has built an 8-stage water-cleaning plant so that all of the wastewater from cleaning the sticky, nutrient-rich fruit off the coffee beans is filtered and then recirculated back into the mill using a pump. The Finca is also home to an impressive worm farm that he has built with the sole purpose of turning the leftover coffee fruit pulp into healthy compost for the young coffee trees. Coffee pulp is very acidic and is not great to use as a mulch as it can damage the roots of the coffee trees, plus it takes far longer to break down into useable compost. Converting it into compost brings down the pH level and is achieved naturally through using worms, or a manual compost heap that requires calcium to be applied to raise the pH level.
It was an incredible sight to see and one that gave hope to the future of farming. I say this because clearly the business model is working - Marvin is expanding and now providing milling services for the local community but he is also making sure the practices on his own farm are done right.
SHOP LAS BRISAS HERE
