Natural Yellow Caturra

From Coffee Review:

“Complex and balanced flavor and aroma: orange-toned citrus, cherry, cedary aromatic wood, a hint of baking spice. The acidity is extraordinary: deep, powerful yet roundly rich and sweet. The mouthfeel is full and syrupy, the finish long and fruit-saturated. … This is a coffee that demonstrates the potential of both dried-in-the-fruit coffees and Ka’u coffees.”

It wasn’t always this way. Lorie first tried her standard washed process on the yellow caturra variety. She pulped ripe, yellow cherries to release the seeds, or coffee beans. After the beans fermented in water, they dried in the sun and rested for a few months to balance the flavors.

The results were disappointing. “Thin and sour,” Miguel said. “It had far less intensity than Typica or Bourbon.”

After more discouraging experiments, Lorie finally tried the natural method. She selected the ripest, yellowest coffee cherries and spread them on elevated wire racks. Using a rake, she turned the beans frequently to speed drying in the sun.

“It worked astonishingly well,” Miguel says. “The added sweetness and mouthfeel helped to balance the high acidity of this variety.”

To refine the coffee, they let it rest for months, tasting and evaluating it at different times in a process called cupping. Then they made more batches to test its consistency.

The result: a coffee powerfully evocative of tropical fruits, vanilla and blueberries. Grind it fresh, and the aroma fills the room.

It’s turned into one of our most popular coffees. And with only a few hundred trees on our farm, it’s also one of our most limited.

Miguel laughs about the early, frustrating days of working with yellow caturra. “Years ago, I thought it might be necessary to pull these trees out and replace them with a different variety,” he says. “Now I wish we had more.”