Overview
This is a traditional washed coffee from Mendosayoc, Peru, produced by Ermitaño Huillca Quispe.
The flavor profile is harmonious, subtle, and approachable, with notes of black tea, nectarine, lemon, honey, and rosemary.
Our roasters recommend roasts with low initial temperature and a strong gas input, tapering off around the color change.
When brewed, our team recommends a moderately coarse grind size aiming for a slightly lower to average extraction on a conical brewer.
Taste Analysis by Isabella Vitaliano
Back for the second year in a row, Ermitaño and the team at Café Orígenes bring you this composed and pleasant coffee from the southern region of Peru.
Subtle but approachable, you have the classic caramel and lemon-type flavors from this Peruvian coffee with an elevated twist. Expect herbal notes to create the base of this coffee, the team got notes of fennel, anise, lemon verbena, and root beer. Layered up with fruit notes like baked pear, melon watermelon, this is an ideal daily driver for your menu in your preferred brewing format. Dealers' choice!
Source Analysis by Chris Kornman and Charlie Habegger
We’re positively thrilled to see Ermitaño Huillca Quispe’s coffee return to our menu for the second year. Our connection to this coffee is very recent, and we were lucky to be aided in its export again this year by our friends Edith Meza of Finca Tasta.
In April of 2022 at the SCA Expo in Boston, Chris met Luke Agnes who spoke a little about a startup coffee organization in Cusco. Luke had been working with a small NGO team to improve agricultural health in the region, and identified a group of coffee producers who they felt lacked access to differentiated markets who would recognize the quality of the work they’d been doing. Chris asked for samples, found the coffees interesting enough to pursue, and began working with Luke to identify microlots and larger blended coffees that could work as part of a consolidated container.
In conversation, Luke revealed that he’d consulted with Edith Meza of Finca Tasta, one of our existing supply partners, which gave us the confidence boost we needed to ink a deal with this emergent association, whose experience navigating milling and exporting were somewhat limited. Between back and forth emails, WhatsApp messages, and zoom meetings between Luke, Chris, and Royal coffee trader Lauren Cropper, plus with the help of Edith, we assembled a container and waited for it to arrive.
It’s extremely rare that a new, exploratory sourcing relationship works out to purchase as much coffee as we did with Café Origenes, much less to secure a spot on our top shelf product line. But here we are, with an excellent microlot from one of the farmer members of a brand-new coffee supply partner, and we’re thrilled to share it with the world.
In Peru the bulk of coffee production comes from small farms owned and managed by people who follow organic farm management practices attuned to their cultural connection with the land. Producers typically cultivate coffee on just a few acres of land intercropped with shade trees, bananas, corn, and beans. They carefully harvest and sort cherries before depulping, fermenting, washing, and drying the coffee using their own micro-mills. While producers design farm management and post-harvest solutions to fit their needs, they also need a strong alliance to bring their coffee to the international market and earn fair prices.
Ermitaño Huillca Quispe’s farm is 1.5 hectares in size and located in the Mendosayoc community, part of the Yanatile valley north of Cusco city. The vast majority of Ermitaño’s coffee is Typica, which, even in Peru, one of the Americas’ last bastions of the variety, is quite rare to find. In addition to coffee Ermitaño also grows citrus fruits, cherimoya, and granadilla (a species of passionfruit). As a small farmer, Ermitaño manages all aspects of processing himself, depulping, fermenting, and drying on shaded raised beds on his own property.
Ermitaño is a member of a newly-formed regional association called Café Orígenes. Café Orígenes is in its second year of business exporting coffee from the Yanatile region of southern Peru. After recognizing that producers in Peru’s Lacco Valley, part of historic the Yanatile/Cusco producing zone, were outnumbered by predatory local buyers and with no direct market access, the founders solicited the help of a local NGO, Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development (AASD). With financial and legislative support of AASD, along with coffee farmers from the area, Café Orígenes was created. In addition to marketing and exportation, Café Orígenes also invests in farmer soil fertility and farm resistance to disease, conducts quality control and lot building to maximize differentiation for farmers, and offers full price transparency to their buyers. 100% of profits are re-invested in the organization to expand access of their services to farmers. Including post-harvest quality premiums, Ermitaño was paid an average equivalent price of $2.79 per pound of green exportable coffee.
Green Analysis by Isabella Vitaliano
Ermitaño Huillca’s coffee from Calca returns in triumphant fashion with green specs hitting everything a roaster needs for seamless roasting. Moisture content and water activity in the expected average range are indicative of ideal drying practices. With a condensed spread in the 16-18 range, roasting should be even across your batches.
The southern region is known for its ideal climatic conditions and offers cultivars like Caturra, Typica, and Bourbon. This lot composed of both Caturra and Typica reflects the high quality that is often expected from this region of Peru.
Diedrich IR5 Analysis by Doris Garrido
This year, we’re delighted to welcome back our Peruvian coffee from Ermitaño Huillca, which has an incredibly sweet taste.
I opted for a roasting approach that combines a low initial temperature with a strong gas input, tapering off around the color change.
I began by preheating the drum and introducing the coffee at 395.1°F, maintaining full gas for the first minute. I noticed the turning point was slightly elevated at 183.1°F, suggesting rapid heat absorption by the coffee. After four minutes, I reduced the gas to 60% just before noting the color changing at 305°F.
Following the color change, I further decreased the gas to 30% and monitored the rate of rise (RoR), aiming to decelerate the process while introducing 50% airflow. Upon reaching 360°F, I increased the airflow to full capacity, and the coffee began to crack at 382.9°F.
During the post-development phase, caramelization proceeded evenly, with the RoR declining steadily. I ended the roast after 1 minute and 36 seconds at 395.1°F. The coffee absorbs heat quickly, contributing to its delightful sweetness. The caramelization process enhances the aroma and imparts a complex flavor profile to the final brew.
At the cupping table, this roast yielded a cup with a silky texture, exceptional clarity, and a blend of citrusy orange, nectarine, and plum-like acidity, culminating in a buttery chocolate finish. It’s richly sweet, with hints of vanilla and a subtle floral note of violet.
Given its pronounced acidity, intricate body, and sweetness, we’ve chosen to serve this coffee as a pour-over at the Crown. This year, the Peru Ermitano coffee continues to excel, much like it did previously.
Ikawa Pro V3 Analysis by Isabella Vitaliano
Our current Ikawa practice compares two sample roast profiles, originally designed for different densities of green coffee. The two roasts differ slightly in total length, charge temperature, and time spent between color changes in first crack. You can learn more about the profiles here.
A standout coffee on the cupping table you can expect a creamy and nuanced profile from this profile. With notes of pear, marzipan, lemongrass, mint, melon, orange and milk chocolate you can’t go wrong with this one!
On the high-density profile, it really expressed all of those beautiful spring fruit salad notes like melon and pear. With a healthy dose of the classic almond notes one can expect from the region, the nuance is not to be missed in this roast profile.
On the light-density roast, it developed more of those sugars like caramel, and milk chocolate with a bit of lemon acidity. This roast had the slightest toasty edge to it and pushed some of those almond notes out a bit more.
In this round, I recommend using the high-density profile on this coffee. With those light fruit and sweet herbal notes like mint, this coffee is easily classified as chuggable (by the way, why does the dictionary not think this is a word by now?!).
You can roast your own by linking to our profiles in the Ikawa Pro app here:
Roast 1: Low Density Sample Roast
Roast 2: High Density Sample Roast
Brew Analysis by Tim Tran
As a coffee coming in at a time considered “late-season", this Peruvian coffee from Ermitano Huillca Quispe highlights the flexibility of seasonality. This coffee, exported by the young organization Cafe Origenes, is stunning. Across our many brews this coffee showcased beautiful flavors and aromas of black tea, peach, and nectarine.
To start our brew analysis, we began with a 1:15.79 ratio at a moderately coarse grind on a conical brewer. The first brew yielded a cup pushing ripe stone fruit and tea, sprinkled with notes of peanuts and mild tannins. The coffee carried a very rich, buttery body that really lasted on the tongue.
While the coffee tasted very good on the initial brew, we wanted to examine its responsiveness to adjustments in both coarser and finer grind. The coffee responded well to both settings. We tasted across a TDS range of 1.26-1.36, with extraction ranging from 17.11%-18.25%. Across all brews, sweet peach in tandem with black tea florals were the main drivers of flavor, supported by light lemon, honey and rosemary. Ultimately though we preferred the coffee on the finer grind setting of the two brews. We found the coffee to showcase additional notes of orange marmalade undercut by raisin and cherry sweetness to complement its rich body.
We recommend a moderately coarse grind size aiming for a slightly lower to average extraction on a conical brewer. We hope you enjoy this wonderful coffee from Ermitano Huillca Quispe.
Espresso Analysis by Asha Wells & MJ Smith
This coffee from Café Orígenes in Peru makes for a truly classic tasting espresso, in that it was approachable, but not predictable! It possessed tasty chocolatey and caramelized sugar sweetness, accompanied by some light, pleasant citrus and delicate floral notes. As it cooled, we were also able to pick up some enchanting stone fruit and underripe berry notes. In my opinion, this coffee would make for an excellent addition to anyone's espresso bar because, while it does have the potential for some interesting tasting notes, it has a wonderfully sweet and stable body to hold it down. It was delicious on its own but would also blend perfectly in a milk-based beverage.
Our first recommended espresso recipe sits just between the prominent herbal complexity this coffee confidently expresses and the gentle, creamy, sweetness that can be coaxed out under the right conditions. We tasted notes of sassafras, baked pear, coriander, and creme brulee, this striking combination also carried with it a taste of childhood, as only a root beer float can. Using a lower dose, with a moderate output & extraction time we found this shot to be balanced, with a mellow body.
The second recipe that this coffee took to be a higher dose & yield paired with a moderate extraction time. This approach revealed more rounded herbal notes, such as jasmine, star anise, and vanilla, and resolved on the palate with notes of lemon curd, and orange wine.
As for performance on bar, our shots pulled consistently and reliably, had varied notes, and an incredible depth of body. This coffee could hang with the best of them and is, in our opinion, a lovely addition to any arsenal. As always, roast will be a huge factor in how any espresso recipe performs, and if you follow our roast analysis you may find yourself with a similar outcome. Hope you enjoy!
