Dennis Jackson is the Master Roaster at Conscious Cup. He has been buying, roasting, and teaching coffee since 2004. He is a Master Roaster, Coffee Buyer, Production Manager, and Green Coffee Consultant.
Notes from the Roaster:
This coffee has it all. Sweet, clean, very bright and chocolatey. It’s not often I find a coffee with apple like sweetness and acidity, otherwise known as malic acid. The Bella Carmona is meticulously cared for from picking to processing and the cup shows this.
I enjoy this coffee in a pour over method where I have complete control over the time, temperature and grind size. I’m not saying it doesn’t do well as a manual drip, in fact, it does really well.
We’ve collected the information below from our importer, Royal Coffee
Luis Pedro Zelaya has earned a lot of attention around the cupping table and among learned coffee professionals. He has four generations of Guatemalan coffee culture pulsing through his veins and an Agribusiness degree from the renowned University of Zamorano. His stellar professional reputation for producing world-class coffees is drawn from his ability to implement precise farm management and post-harvest processing decisions.
The perennial arrival of the Bella Carmona lots personifies the combined execution of all the fundamentals. The process starts at the Zelaya’s family farm, Hacienda Carmona. where plant nutrition, pruning, and pest management are superb, which results in a selection of exquisite coffee cherries. At Bella Vista, the location of wet and dry-mill, Luis Pedro and his team meticulously process fully traceable lots by harvest date, location, variety, and altitude. Coffee is de-pulped, fermented, and washed in a very traditional way perfected over the last 100 years.
Then the coffee is gradually dried in a controlled environment designed to protect cup quality. Raised drying beds and sensor-controlled airflow permit a more uniform drying process and an additional opportunity for hand sorting parchment as it dries.
The same focus on sorting and quality control is executed through to the final export stage. Bella Vista’s dry-mill has also been specifically designed for sorting high-quality micro-lots. Bella Carmona is produced in the Antigua region, which has a protected designation of origin (PDO) established because of Antigua’s renowned coffee reputation.
Producer: Luis Pedro Zelaya Zamora
Variety: Bourbon, Caturra
Region: Antigua Guatemala, Sacatepéquez, Guatemala
Harvest: October - February
Altitude: 1500 – 1650 masl
Soil: Volcanic loam
Process: Fully washed and dried on patios and elevated tables inside solar dryers that provide protection from the rain