Guatemala

Guatemala is not only ranked #8 among coffee producers, but coffee is also one of the best in the world.

• As early as the 18th century, Spanish Jesuits brought the first coffee plants from Yemen to Guatemala.
• In the 1850s and 1860s the coffee industry began to develop.
• During the colonial period, the indigenous population of the Maya was expropriated and turned into “Colonos”.
  
• They were still allowed to live in the land but had to work for it.
• Unfortunately, some fincas still work today according to the colonial era.
• However, the trend is clearly away from a few families controlling the cultivation, the ANACAFE (the national coffeeboard) – to local agricultural cooperatives, which are committed to the needs of small farmers.
• At that time, as today, coffee is the country’s most important export product.
• Areas of cultivation on 500 – 1,200 m are: Fraijanes, Antigua, Huehuetenango, Coban, San Marcos, Nuevo Oriente and Atitlan.
• It is mainly Arabica beans planted, to a small extent Robusta varieties.
• The quality class SHB (Strictly Hard Bean) gets coffees from high cultivation areas, where they grow slower and thus to a high-quality coffee with a fine aroma.
• The coffee is mostly hand-picked and sun-dried.
• The active volcanoes make the soil very fertile and give the coffee a very spicy aroma with a slightly smoky note.
• The taste is balanced, the coffee has a full body and a very fine acidity.

☕ Preparation

• Most Guatemalans brew rather weak coffee and drink it with lots of sugar.
• For this, the coffee is simply boiled in a normal pot and then filled into cups.
• The share of instant coffee grows in Guatemala – in 2015 it was already 8% of coffee consumption.

A post shared by Bunaa (@bunaa.de) on Aug 23, 2018 at 11:10pm PDT

Coffee

• Antigua
• “El Moreno” Huehuetenango
• SHB Finca Bremen
• SHB San Marcos
• Tempixque
• Appaece
• Goldfinch
• Mocino
• Lampocoy Grand Cru
• SHB Finca “La Cascada”