Honduras: La Orquidea

Starting with pineapple and raspberry for that Fruit Salad Sweet hit, this coffee is intriguing from the first sip. Developing into fresh red cherries on the finish, they linger on to the aftertaste, where they are joined by a delicate dark chocolate note.

You’ll find superstar producer Benjamín Paz and his farm La Orquidea in the Santa Bárbara department of Honduras. His family have always worked with coffee; his grandfather was a coffee producer and his father started a coffee trading company (Beneficio San Vicente) 40 years ago. Benjamín has been involved at Beneficio San Vicente since he was a little boy, helping with pretty much every role within the business - de-pulping, drying, storing coffee and so on - and after finishing university, he started work within their specialty coffee program. 

In 2013, after having worked around El Cedral (the nearest village to what's now his farm) for 6 years connecting coffee producers with specialty coffee buyers, he found a property so beautiful that he knew it was time to make the jump into producing his own coffee. Within a year he was planting new trees on his land and starting to create what we now know as La Orquidea. 

Something fairly unusual about the trees Benjamín is tending at La Orquidea is that they’re entirely Pacas, no other varietals. The first Pacas trees were discovered in 1949 on a farm owned by the Pacas family in the Santa Ana region of El Salvador. In 1960, the Salvadoran Institute for Coffee Research began a program of pedigree selection to cultivate what is now the official Pacas varietal. It now accounts for about 25% of El Salvador's coffee production and was introduced to Honduras by IHCAFE in 1974. You may be more familiar with Pacas’s younger generation, Pacamara (we sent you some in October!) as genetically it’s half of that variety alongside Maragogype. 

Pacas is a natural mutation of Bourbon, similar to Caturra in Brazil and Villa Sarchi in Costa Rica. Akin to other widely cultivated Bourbon offshoots, Pacas has a single-gene mutation that causes the plant to grow smaller. This is its chief benefit: the plant’s small size offers higher potential yields and the possibility of placing plots closer together to increase total fruit production on a farm.  Additionally, trees that grow shorter require less pruning to keep the fruit within arm's reach - an important virtue when farming on steep and difficult-to-access land where harvests rely on hand picking. As a varietal, it’s a roaster’s friend. It’s super flexible and has the ability to come out with very different profiles. It can be very sweet and Bourbon-like and chocolatey, or it can lean the other way with a more elegant, delicate and complex profile. It’s able to be lots of different things, and that can be very useful for a roaster. 

The story of how we came to buy from La Orquidea is one of Roland’s favourites. Lots of people have heard of Benjamín, he’s very famous in the coffee world, but our link with him actually came about via our relationship with Alejandro Girón at La Alondra. Roland got to know Alejandro, and his older brother Miguel who runs the farm, while Alejandro was working on his masters in Business. During Covid he reached out to Roland for an interview to discuss green coffee buying and they had a lovely long discussion for his thesis. When Roland asked why he was interested in the coffee business specifically, Alejandro replied that he’s Honduran and his family have a coffee farm - obviously Roland followed up that he’d love to taste their coffee! After securing a sample and finding that it was really tasty, we wanted the coffee but weren’t sure how we were going to source it. 

Fast forward a short time, Langdon Coffee Merchants were hosting some visiting Honduran exporters and producers at our Emma Street eatery, Roland was coincidentally in London that day so he joined them for lunch. One of those visitors just so happened to be Benjamín and they got on like a house on fire. He had immediately noticed our coffees from the Mierisch Family on the shelves, as it turned out Wingo and Benjamin are good friends – a good tick for both parties!  

A couple weeks later, at London Coffee Festival, Roland met up with Alejandro and mentioned that he’d actually met another Honduran coffee producer recently, this chap called Benjamín. Alejandro said no way, Benjamín’s my brother’s friend and he’s who exports our coffee 😮 This is the moment where everything comes together. Roland went back to Langdon Coffee Merchants and linked everything up - Benjamín’s exporting the coffee for la Alondra, we want the coffee, they helped us import Alejandro’s coffee to the UK, and we decided to snag some from Benjamín too! The coffee he’s most famous for is from his farm La Salsa, which wasn’t available, but when Roland found out that his other farm, La Orquidea, grows Pacas… well, Roland LOVES Pacas 🤎 

This is a Honey processed coffee, so it starts out by removing the skin and the outer fruit of the cherry, leaving the sticky mucilage behind on the coffee seeds. However, it has then gone on to an anaerobic fermentation phase - the seeds are sealed in plastic sacks along with water, closed at the top with a one-way breather to vent gases. The result is a pretty funky number 🕺 It’s a lot of funk for a Honey process, it’s definitely out there. Roland had this to say: 

“I always find this coffee really tasty. We’ve been buying it consistently the last few years, ever since that first time, and I’ve now travelled to see the farm and the processing happening. It’s been one of those great coffees that consistently delivers a clean but funky cup. It’s definitely not your average coffee, it’s challenging for some people, but you get that clarity of flavour still. It’s not dirty or rough, there’s no drying to it, it’s very sweet and juicy and red fruits… just super tasty. I’m a really big fan of it. I think one of the things that sets this apart is that we’ve come to this coffee in such an unusual direction. Usually it’s people seeking out Benjamín for himself and his famous coffee, and then maybe they find some of the other producers that he works with later, but actually we met him through La Alondra and once we became friends we wanted his coffee.” 

• Country: Honduras
• Department: Santa Bárbara
• Producer: Benjamín Paz Muñoz and Miguel Moreno
• Farm: La Orquidea
• Altitude: 1,520-1,610 m.a.s.l.
  
• Varietals: Pacas
• Fermentation: Anaerobic
• Process: Honey

Medium

This coffee really shines at a medium roast, which allows the vibrant fruit notes and the unique character from the anaerobic honey processing to come through clearly. We're looking to highlight those pineapple, raspberry and cherry notes while letting a touch of dark chocolate emerge in the finish.

Roaster Notes

We take this through first crack and allow it to develop slightly in the gap before finishing well ahead of second crack. The key is giving it enough development time to build body and sweetness without overdoing it – this coffee has plenty of natural complexity from the processing, so we don't want to obscure that with roast development.

The Pacas varietal is wonderfully forgiving in the roaster, which is part of what makes this coffee so reliable year after year. It responds well to this medium profile, balancing the funky fermented characteristics with clean, sweet fruit flavours.

For Home Roasters

If you're roasting this at home, aim for a steady development after first crack for about 60-90 seconds before dropping. You want to hear the beans actively cracking but not rushing toward second. The coffee should smell sweet and fruity as you approach the end of the roast – if it's getting too sharp or bitter, you've pushed it a touch too far.

Tasting Notes: Pineapple, cherry, dark chocolate.

Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores

• Clean cup: 6/8
• Sweetness: 6.5/8
• Acidity: 6/8
• Mouthfeel: 7/8
• Flavour: 6.5/8
• Aftertaste: 6/8
• Balance: 6.5/8
• Overall: 6.5/8
• Correction: +36
• Total: 87/100

If you would like to find out more about how we score coffees, make sure to read our blog post "What Do Coffee Cuppings Scores Actually Mean?" by clicking here.

Our coffee is roasted fresh and ships quickly – which means it might arrive a little lively. Here's the thing: freshly roasted beans are still busy releasing carbon dioxide (a natural byproduct of roasting), and all that activity can make your brew taste a bit sharp or unsettled.

Give it a few days to calm down and something lovely happens. Those brighter, edgier notes mellow out, sweetness develops, and the flavours you're actually after can really come into focus.

We recommend resting your coffee for at least 5-7 days from the roast date on the bag before brewing. A little patience goes a long way.

That said, this is just what we've found works best – not a rule. If you can't wait, we completely understand. Tuck in whenever you like.