Crown Jewel Guatemala Washed Antigua Luis Girón
41447-1 – SPOT RCWHSE
41447-1 – SPOT RCWHSE
Overview
The flavor profile is bright and complex, with juicy layers of apricot underpinned by a dulce de leche sweetness and unusual spice and savory notes, including hints of Pu’er tea.
Our roasters found this washed Guatemala works across roast levels. A careful medium-light roast kept opening up as it cooled, moving from black tea to sugar cane, pear, quince, and lemon. A darker roast should lean further into chocolate with subtle fruit.
When brewed, we recommend brewing this coffee at a moderate dose with a moderate grind setting.
Taste Analysis by Isabella Vitaliano
As an Antigua washed coffee, this coffee really represents the ideal version of what this region can produce. Known for its iconic beauty, but not necessarily its ability to produce bright, vibrant, flashy coffees, this selection from Luis Girón is pleasant exception, with complexity and liveliness reminiscent of further flung regions and rarer cultivars. It’s an absolute masterclass in finesse.
In the cup this coffee has some vibrant savory green notes and a citrus sparkle that’s paired with dulce de leche and dried apricot. A tangible dance between savory and sweet overlays a base layer of Pu’er tea. In between the alleyways of main character notes, you’ll also discover baking spice, grapefruit, cashew and plum. Each brew reveals new facets that are distinctly representative of the region. This is a direct and approachable coffee that would be ideal for espresso or batch brew. This is an easy-to-love coffee you’ll want on your menu for the fall/winter season and beyond.
Source Analysis by Charlie Habegger
The location where a coffee is cultivated is often the defining characteristic. This is certainly true for coffee grown in the region that surrounds Antigua, Guatemala. But contrary to what might be summed up with a location, there are many nuances to this single lot from the Antigua region, which was cultivated on a seven-acre family farm called La Bendicion and owned by Luis Girón. Luis received La Bendicion as an inheritance from his grandparents. During the harvest Luis can offer employment to 15 people living in neighboring communities. In addition to managing his farm Luis also works as a representative of San Miguel Coffee an organization that works with more than 55 small coffee producers from Antigua.
Luis gives full attention to farm management and selective picking, and then transports harvested cherries to the San Miguel wet mill, which has all the tools to expertly manage the entire post-harvest details.
With little to no processing infrastructure for processing at the farmers, San Miguel provides a centrally located collection point where farmers can easily deliver their harvested cherries. From there, the cherries are transported to a mill designed for receiving and processing from the small farms in the region. The daily delivery of cherries is floated to separate out damaged and less dense beans and then depulped. The depulped coffee seeds are fermented in tanks for up to 36 hours and washed. The mill is equipped with patios and raised beds that are used in a two-step process, first with gentle pre-drying on patios and then precisely finished to 11 percent moisture on raised beds.
Dried parchment is taken to a dry mill in Guatemala City which is equipped with multiple pieces of equipment to sort green coffee typical in most dry mills, such as gravity beds, screens and electronic color sorters. Mild weather in Guatemala City provides ideal conditions for storing parchment in the warehouse until it is time to export. San Miguel also has an experienced team dedicated to maintaining traceability and ensuring quality control. The experience brought to bear by San Miguel makes this classic Antigua regional profile shine.
Green Analysis by Isabella Vitaliano
This washed coffee is incredibly immaculate and comes from Antigua region of Guatemala. Lower than average density paired with a higher average moisture content and activity means the coffee can develop through Maillard quicker and brown faster. Be sure to take this nice and slow in the roaster and check out the roasters’ notes for further details.
Aillio Bullet R1 IBTS Analysis by Evan Gilman
We use the RoasTime app and roast.world site to document our roasts on the Bullet. You can find our roast documentation below by searching on roast.world, or by clicking on the link below.
Take a look at our roast profiles below, as they are constantly changing!
As someone who is generally a proponent of wild and wooly processing techniques, I have lately become enamored of a consistent and thorough classic washed process coffee. Lo and behold, this phenomenal Guatemalan selection has landed just in time to suit my more normie tastes. But worry not, dear reader; this coffee does not give NPC energy, not in the slightest.
I knew from experience that a washed Guatemalan coffee would appreciate being handled with care. Pardon my anthropomorphizing. I started with 446F charge temperature, P8 power, and F2 fan. Adding heat at turning point, I reached P9 for about 30 seconds for a nice push into yellowing and onward into Maillard. At peak rate of change, I reduced heat to P7 and increased fan to F3 for a slower roast overall. My only other moves were to increase fan speed to F4 well before first crack, and lower to P6 as well. At 9:46 / 395F, this was a fairly standard roast of a washed coffee as far as things go. A bit of peakiness in rate of change going into first crack, but nothing too noteworthy.
The cup, however, was very noteworthy indeed. In fact, I kept coming back with more and more notes as this coffee cooled. What was at first black tea morphed into raw sugar cane sweetness, with overtones of fresh pear. Upon cooling, there was yet more nuance, with tart quince flavors and super clean lemon juiciness. This coffee just kept opening up!
If you’re looking for a classic profile, this coffee is going to hit all the marks at medium-to-dark roast level. My roast was a little on the medium-light side in terms of coloration (think Agtron 62 or so), but held just a ton of sweet and sugary notes that’ll be pleasing to any palate. Going darker is going to get you even more chocolate and subtle fruit notes. Really, you can’t go wrong with this one.
You can follow along with my roast here at roast.world: https://roast.world/egilman/roasts/rxsOuuImXhmjB6cql8CzD
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 change in first crack. You can learn more about the profiles here.
The low-density roast of this coffee has sweet citrus notes and black tea flavors that are classically found in the region. The high-density roast had more depth as there was a little bit more development. It had chocolate notes, sweet wafer cookies, and dark caramel. Both roasts were delicious but if you are curious about exploring the acidity this coffee has to offer, I would recommend trying the low-density roast. Happy tasting!
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
A flexible and versatile coffee has arrived to the Crown Jewel line up from Finca La Benedicion in Guatemala! An exemplar of classic flavors found in washed coffees, this coffee from Luis Giron proved to be a tasty brew, yielding great cups on both of our tested brewing devices.
My favorite recipe employed a moderate dose at a moderately fine grind setting, brewed on a flat-bottom brewer. As expected, this recipe gave a slightly higher than average extraction percentage of 19.26% and a 1.37 TDS. This recipe balanced clean citrus acidity with developed stone fruit sweetness and tea florals. The roundness of the flavor profile really meshed well with a creamy, medium weight texture.
My second favorite recipe was a moderate dose at a moderate grind setting, brewed on a conical dripper. This recipe yielded a 1.33 TDS with an 18.4% extraction. This recipe pushed sweetness forward in the final cup, with notes of brown sugar and almonds standing at the forefront. This was backed by notes of black tea and a silky, light body.
This coffee proved to be dynamically exciting to brew, with a varied number of flavor profiles found in each of the different cups, so definitely a treat to explore! Ultimately, I recommend brewing this coffee at a moderate dose with a moderate grind setting. Pushing for increased extraction definitely continued giving tastier and tastier cups, so don’t be shy pushing for higher extraction. Enjoy!
Espresso Analysis by Akiko Scott
I was so elated to be able to work with coffee from Guatemala. This coffee was fun to work with, and I knew from start to finish this would be a pleasant experience. Looking more into the city of Antigua gave me more context as to the versatility of this coffee, and insight as to how the flavors that I got from the beans came to be. I’m amazed by the way coffee farmers can work with the land to produce coffee for people who are willing to experiment and take espresso to so many different places.
My first recipe was dosed out at 18.5g, yielding 41g out for a total of 29 seconds. This dial was very acidic and tart, with a little bit of a sour green apple lingering on the palate afterwards. I enjoyed the fruit forward direction that this was going in, but did feel that there were some things that I would adjust to bring out complexities and sweetness I knew would be there.
For my second recipe I went with a dose of 19g, yielding 38g in 25 seconds. This dose was incredible, and really bursting with more of the juicy, citrus flavors that I was looking for. I found that there were notes of sour cherry, grapefruit juice, and a malty dark chocolate sweetness that lingered in the most pleasant way. I could really see this being paired well with a tonic with a bit of grapefruit zest, or grapefruit syrup.
Overall, I think that this is coffee that does really well with a higher dose, and a lower yield in weight and time. I really appreciated the vibrant juicy notes that this coffee has to offer, and it certainly speaks to the region that it is produced. She proves to be an island girl through and through.