HONDURAS FTO UBALDO GONZALEZ BLACK HONEY GRAINPRO BAGS GrainPro

Coffee Background

Ubaldo Gonzalez is a founding member of Cooperativa Regional de Agricultores Orgánicos de la Sierra (RAOS), which was established in 1997 as the first cooperative of small and medium organic coffee producers in Honduras.  He cultivates coffee on an 11 acre farm called La Joya located in the municipality of San Jose. Coffee is the main source of income for Ubaldo and his family.  With support from RAOS, Ubaldo has been able to reconfigure his micro-mill to ecologically run with very little water by using a demucilager, which controls the amount of mucilage that remains on the coffee bean after depulping without fermenting or washing the coffee.  He has perfected the Black Honey process, in which the demucilager mechanically strips some of the mucilage from the bean. The coffee is then placed directly on raised beds to dry with a light layer of mucilage still attached to the bean. This process has enabled Ubaldo to market his coffee as a micro-lot through RAOS. In the last few years, RAOS has also invested significantly to improve its drymill installation. The facility has 2 electronic color sorters running in series to select the best coffee before export.