Ecuador Coffee Overview

Like its neighbors, Ecuador is harvested counter to the Central America crop, so it arrives in the US at an ideal time to replace Centrals that might be getting tired in the cup.

Coffee Takes a Back Seat

As other Ecuadorian exports (bananas, oil, shrimp) exceeded coffee in importance, hope that the quality of the coffee would improve dimmed. They managed to continue to ship low grade arabica and robusta coffees, finding a market among the institutional and commercial roasters of the U.S. and Europe who are more concerned with price than cup quality. Low grade arabicas are dry-processed in Ecuador, called “bola,” and have a hard, earthyEarthy is a flavor term with some ambivalence, used positively in some cases, negatively in others.: Sumatra coffees can have a positive earthy flavor, sometimes described as “wet… flavor. I found that some supermarket roasted/ground coffees like Pilon and Bustelo use a lot of Ecuador bola coffee. But coffee formerly employed about 15% of the rural population.

Challenges Along the Way

As I mentioned, Ecuador has everything it takes to grow great coffee. Positioned between ColombiaColombian coffee is highly marketed and widely available in the US. They have been largely successful at equating the name Colombian Coffee with “Good” Coffee. This is half-true…. and PeruPeruvian coffees have Central American brightness but in a South American coffee flavor package overall. The good organic lots do have more of a “rustic” coffee character.: Organic…, the interior mountain ranges have plenty of altitude, good weather patterns, and ideal soil for coffee. But a great coffee can be ruined at any stage in the process, from the tree to the cup. Many of the problems are with a lack of adherence to quality standards in the wet-processing, drying, restingEither the resting of parchment coffee after drying, or for the home roaster, post-roast resting.: Resting might refer to “reposo”, the time after drying the parchment coffee, when… (reposo) and then dry-milling of the coffee. A bit too much 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… in the wet millThe wet mill is a processing center where coffee cherry from the tree is brought for initial processing.: The wet mill goes by many names (Beneficio, Factory, Washing… tanks, a rain storm drenching the coffee when it is on the drying patios, moist low-altitude conditions during the reposo, or badly adjusted dry-mill equipment can all ruin a wonderful coffee.

Poor infrastructure, delays in shipment, tainted shipping containers … there is one way to produce good coffee and a thousand ways to ruin it! So the new efforts by the Ecuadorian Agriculture DepartmentA Department is the term used in some Latin American countries for a State or County. For example, Huila Department is the state in the South of Colombia. and farmer Co-operatives focus on education, improved equipment, and adherence to high standards.

I did travel to Ecuador a while back, and we take at least 1 trip a year since then.