Roasting samples with Jose using the tiny sample roaster

Wahoo…The harvest brings a flurry of activity in the country. People from all over the world come to Guatemala looking for coffees to import. People growing coffee are looking for buyers. Indigenous people follow the harvest from sea level to high altitudes working from finca to finca.
I took a boat ride across the lake with Michael today to “cup” coffee from a finca located on the slopes of a volcano (dormant for the time being). Cupping is when a potential coffee buyer roasts a coffee to various degrees (light to dark) and tries them all one after another. There is usually a round table with cups going all the way around, and the cupper tries them one after another to determine if the coffee is worth buying.
We went to the bodega (storage place or warehouse) where the coffee was being held and talked with Jose Luis. He is the youngest in a multi generation coffee family. We pulled multiple 2 ounce samples from multiple 100 pound bags of green coffee. This way we could make sure that all the bags in the bodega were of the same quality. We then pulled out a small sample roaster and put each coffee to the test.
Jose didn’t have a grinder on site so we took a walk to his brother in law’s coffee/internet café, poignantly name “Café Internet,” to grind and cup the coffee. The coffee was excellent.




Cherries on an Aribica Catura coffee tree

“Café Internet” where we cupped the coffee

Michael, Jose and I cupping