El Salvador Coffee Overview

In times of stability El Salvador has flourished in terms of coffee quality. It’s been able to adapt to the needs of the small specialty coffeeSpecialty coffee was a term devised to mean higher levels of green coffee quality than average “industrial coffee” or “commercial coffee”. At this point, the term is of…<coffee roasterA machine for roasting coffee. Or the person operating it! The basic requirements for a coffee roaster are a heating element that gets suitably hot and a mechanism…, with increased  availability of small lots from good small-to-medium sized farms.

We now see an eruption of farm-specific regional offerings from these producers. El Salvador always had the right ingredients —soil, altitude, climate —to produce coffee on par with its neighbors. Most of all, it has the cultivars: Bourbon, the classic old-world coffee and good-tasting natural hybrids of Bourbon, Pacas and CaturraCatimor is a broad group of cultivars derived from a Hibrido de Timor (HdT) and Caturra cross, highly productive, sometimes with inferior cup flavor. The main issue is….

El Salvador does have a secret up it’s sleeve. It’s the Pacamara variety …

El Salvador does have a secret up it’s sleeve. It’s the PacamaraAs the name implies, Pacamara is a large bean cultivar, a cross between Pacas and Maragogype with unique flavor properties. This variant originated in El Salvador in 1958,… variety, a natural cross between Pacas and the large-bean MaragogypeMaragogype is a mutation of Typica coffee and was discovered in Brazil. The Maragogype is a large plant with big leaves, low production and very large fruits (and… variety. It can have quite exotic flavors spanning a range of fruits and spices. At its worst though, it tastes a lot like green onion! But I think the best Pacamara coffee in the world comes from El Salvador and we love to feature these when we find a delicious one! (Hold the onions).

From Underexposed to Overexposed?

There’s been a further conundrum in the marketing of El Salvador coffees though. In the last few years, though, the growing reputation of El Salvador may have out-paced the reality. Competition for certain well-known farms drove prices to levels that were not commensurate with the cup quality.

This may be the after-effect of coffee competitions; unsustainable expectations from top coffee producers, and farm-business models based on pricing that doesn’t work in the long term. A smaller specialty roaster can buy a bit of coffee, let’s say 5 or 10 bags, at a really great price that is double the larger buyer. But that doesn’t mean a producer can get that price for a full container of 250-300 bags.

The niche of premium coffee does not scale up that well, and in hard times there aren’t as many buyers to satisfy the price expectation set in formats like coffee competitions and such.

As stated much El Salvador coffee is a great option for blending, especially as a base in espresso. But coffee from some of the big farms can be a bit ho-hum, and doesn’t necessarily rate well next to the best coffees of its neighbors, like Guatemala. El Salvador’s traditional practices in terms of selecting ripe cherryEither a flavor in the coffee, or referring to the fruit of the coffee tree, which somewhat resembles a red cherry.: Either a flavor in the coffee, or… when harvesting, and traditional wet processWet-processing starts by removing the outer skin of the coffee cherry with a machine called a pulper, then fermenting the remaining fruit (with green bean inside) in water… have been outstanding. But large operations don’t often maintain their drying patios sometimes, dry too hot, or use poorly maintained brick surfaces that trap coffee in cracks or hold too much heat.

Some traditions make for a great basis for cup quality, but others need revision. El Salvadorian coffee can express both, but a great coffee, well-selected in picking, well-processed, can be ruined in one misstep along the way, like mixing lots in the fermentationFermentation in coffee processing traditionally referred to the stage in wet-processing of the coffee. We now understand that fermentation happens more broadly in nearly all processes, including honey… tank, or over-drying on a patio. Coffee quality is tough to achieve consistently, tough to scale up, and tough to maintain harvest to harvest. The most important factor in coffee quality is the work of people, from the picker to the mill manager.

For me, sustainability here means finding a way to pay those people, and have an efficient system as well that maintains quality at a smaller scale farm. That is not easy at all, but I see it in El Salvador, and have great hope for the future of coffee here!