by Isabella Vitaliano
Welcome to our Specialty Green Coffee Cupping Series on Thursdays where we highlight recent arrivals. We select several coffees to cup at The Crown and provide more in-depth tasting notes, coffee background, and usage recommendations
31860 Peru FT-FLO/USA Organic Amazonas Valle Alto 83+
On the fruit side of this coffee, we have a blackberry and grilled pineapple and we also have notes of caramel, dark honey, cocoa and cashew butter. Ideal for single-origin options and this cup can easily stand out from other drip offerings. This was cupped next to a long list of Peruvian coffees and this certainly had more character than other cups on the table. Beware of dark roasts on this one as it might lean towards a bit savory. Upgrade your drip option or incorporate it as a very nice blend option in your offerings.
Coo-ops have been a long-defined culture of Peru, where the bulk of production comes from small farms owned and managed by producers who rely on the co-op structure for support. Cooperativa Agraria Cafetalera Valle Alto is an association of 317 producers from the Ocallí districts in the Amazonas region.
Often producers will 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.
31871 Peru FT-FLO/USA Organic Aproexport
Buttery and clean this coffee comes to us from the northern region of Peru. A slight sharpness comes from the cup in the form of grapefruit, accompanied by honey, orange juice, dried mango, and your typical nutty notes that can be expected from the region. Keep it in the medium to medium plus range, darker roasts might wash out the interesting acidity that gives it its character and teeter on imbalanced.
Sourced from family-owned farms organized around the Asociacion de Productores y Exportadored de Café Rodriguez de Mendoza (APROEXPORT) which was established in 2013 to support coffee producers from communities near Rodriguez de Mendoza, Peru. Each producer cultivates roughly two to ten hectares of land with a diversity of crops including coffee. Aproexport provides training on organic management and practices that are intended to help increase farmer earnings.
