Smooth Guatemala coffee from Huehuetenango

This coffee is a single origin coffee from the Huehuetenango region in Guatemala.

Pronounced - 'way way ten an go', this Guatemala Huehuetenango coffee is one of our most popular medium roast coffees. Perfect for use through most home brewing methods, its flavour profiles

Taste

A dark roast with traditional flavour, smooth feel with a lovely rich chocolatey aroma

You would be forgiven for not wanting to search for any other coffee beans after this.

Cupping notes: Maple, orange, milk chocolate and fruit notes; syrupy body, juicy acidity; sweet and complex.

Origin

Huehuetenango is one of Guatemala’s three non-volcanic regions, as well as its highest and driest under cultivation, making it one of the best for coffee production.

Currents of hot air sweep up from the Plains of Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca, Mexico, and mix here with the cool air descending from the Cuchumatanes Mountains, creating a microclimate that’s protected from frost and allowing coffee to be cultivated at up to 2,000 meters.

Huehuetenango’s extreme remoteness requires that nearly all producers process their own coffee. Fortunately, the region has abundant rivers and streams, making it relatively easy for producers to set up mills. Still more fortunately, the geographic conditions help to create the exceptional Guatemala Huehuetenango coffee beans with a distinct acidity and fruity flavors.

Ingredients

This coffee is a SHB EP, which specifies that the coffee was grown at an altitude above 1,350 meters. (This term is also synonymous with SHG/Strictly High Grown, a class that’s higher than HB.) EP (European Preparation) means that the green coffee was sorted by hand to remove any defective beans and foreign material.

Heritage

Coffee growing has helped fuel Guatemala’s economy for over a hundred years. Today, an estimated 125,000 coffee producers drive Guatemala’s coffee industry and coffee remains one of Guatemala’s principal export products, accounting for 40% of all agricultural export revenue.

It is most likely that Jesuit missionaries introduced coffee to Guatemala, and there are accounts of coffee being grown in the country as early as mid-18th century. Nonetheless, as in neighbouring El Salvador, coffee only became an important export crop for the country at the advent of synthetic dyes and industrial use in textiles – in the mid-19th century.

Throughout the latter half of the 1800s, various government programs sought to promote coffee as a means to stimulate the economy, including a massive land program started by President Justo Rufino Barrias in 1871, which resulted in the creation of large coffee estates, many of which still produce some of the best Guatemalan coffee available today.