Costa Rica Aquiares Flower Culture - anaerobic flower culture

Cup profile:
Peach, guava, grape, nectarine, white tea, golden maple syrup, elegant

Key Facts:
Aquiares Estate, Turrialba
anaerobic flower culture, 1200-1400 m
Variety: F1 Centroamericano

About the coffee:
The floral sweetness of this coffee is no coincidence, as it undergoes a very special processing method: anaerobic flower culture processing.

Sounds familiar? Exactly, because this coffee was already a bestseller last year and kind of an insider tip at all the festivals where we served it. Nevertheless, the lot has been given a small update - this year the cherries have been fermented as a whole (with the skin), which highlights the special features of the processing method even more precisely and clearly. The hard work of Diego Robelo and his team pays off very well, as the slightly funky fermentation notes blend wonderfully into a balanced cup. What a joy!

About the processing:
The Aquiares farm is located in a special region - the Caribbean Highlands. Here, and only here, a special, very unusual phenomenon sometimes occurs: towards the end of the harvest, rain causes the coffee plants to flower for a second time.

These flowers are picked early in the morning and taken to the mill, where they are fermented spontaneously (by the yeasts naturally occurring on the flowers) in jars of distilled water and sugar for about a week.

Once this fermentation is complete, the coffee is introduced and the flower yeast is used to ferment the coffee. In this case, the flowers and coffee are of the same variety.

The coffee cherries are fermented anaerobically in tanks together with the flower yeast and the flowers for two days before being dried for 16-20 days.

About Aquiares:
The farm was founded in 1890 and is located on the Turrialba volcano between the Aquiares and Turrialba rivers. The work of Diego Robelo's team covers the entire production chain, from growing the seedlings to picking the cherries and processing them. He has also expanded the diversity of coffee varieties in the orchards - and very successfully, as this coffee proves (Centroamericano is a hybrid of Sarchimor and Rume Sudan).

But Diego is not only breaking new ground on his farm: with Paso Paso, he is part of an initiative run by coffee farmers whose knowledge is used to establish a direct link between the origin of the coffee and the roastery.