Nicaraguan Coffees from El Recreo Estate Farm

El Recreo Estate farm is located in a region known as 'The Coffee Triangle', at an altitude of 1,200 meters above sea level. Nicaragua’s northern region is the most fertile in the country, with volcanic soil and luxurious rainforests.

World-class coffee: El Recreo placed in the top 10 in the Rainforest Alliance Cupping Quality contest. We receive the beans unroasted and roast them fresh locally. This is a Caturra variety, which is derivative of Bourbon, an Arabica that we love and our customers are very familiar with - smooth, low in acid, very full palate.


Environmentally and socially conscious: El Recreo supports local adult technical education and provides a children's school and a health center to its workers. 30 families live on the estate and receive medical care from the health center's doctors and nurses, as well as nutritional and work safety education. The estate is Rainforest Alliance certified, and the coffee is grown under the shade of indigenous hardwood trees.

Did we mention that the taste is awesome? 

Bach Coffee - new from Vietnam

We are excited to bring new brands from Vietnam to our offerings. While nobody can argue that Trung Nguyen corners the market with their wonderful Creative Coffee series of coffees, they specialize in vacuum-packed, nitrogen-flushed ground coffees that stay super fresh in their packages, but they refuse to export whole bean to us directly. They simply don't believe whole bean is "necessary", and there is no consumer market for it in Asia. So we have to buy our whole bean from them through our agent in the coffee shop distribution channel in Vietnam. That is not working out very well for us, and there is a cost differential because of the extra transactions involved.

Enter a new generation of fresh coffee companies from Vietnam. The first we will be featuring is Bach Coffee. (No, it's not named after the composer, but a region in Vietnam). They are proud to offer whole bean coffees and are very cooperative to work with. To distinguish themselves, they have adopted a more Western-style air roasting, solving two of the problems we have with the Trung Nguyen whole bean.

Trung Nguyen whole bean is "wet-roasted", meaning they apply what they call "butter oil" and a little sugar to the roasting pans, because it is needed to make the beans roll properly as they tumble and roast. It also creates the distinctive Vietnamese buttery taste. Oddly enough, they often use lecithin or oil that is not butter-based, but it is still referred to as butter roast. Now, that causes two issues. Vegans can't drink this coffee because it might have butter in it, and the beans wind up being stickier in most grinders and can cause clogging issues. We do get a number of calls on that.

Bach beans are drier and will work in any grinder and are suitable for vegans.

But we drink coffee for taste. How good are the Bach coffees? When you pour out the beans from a Bach bag, the first thing you notice is how 100% sound and ripe that are. While a certain percentage of less-than-ripe beans do not ruin the taste of a cup (contrary to a highly publicized myth), 100% ripe beans does make a difference. In general, people have been amazed at how good the Bach coffees are. My personal favorite is the Moc 1, their 100% high-altitude Robusta. This is Vietnamese Robusta at its best, the type of Robusta Italian coffee companies have been secretly sourcing for their top espressos for decades.

Arabica fans will enjoy the multi-source Arabica (Moc 2) that has Bourbon Arabica sourced from Buon Me Thuot and high-altitude Laotian farms.

We invite you to try the new Bach coffees and we have obtained a limited number of small 100-gram "trial-size" bags so you can sample more of them without breaking the bank. Bach coffees are numbered 1, 2 and 3, but we call them simply Robusta (100%), Arabica (100%), and Arabica/Robusta Blend (50/50). Amazingly delicious!

Dangerous Grounds - or Dangerous Ignorance?

Well, I guess we have to laugh (or cry) at the notoriety achieved by Todd Carmichael (of "Dangerous Grounds" television series) for managing to create adventure and pathos around every acquisition of interesting coffee. His latest proclamation is that he is the first to bring Liberica coffee to the USA for us backwards Americans who haven't tasted it since .. well, ever, apparently. Breaking news, Todd, Heirloom Coffee has been bringing the best Liberica coffee from the Philippines to the USA since 2008 and we have been instrumental in assisting in the recovery of this once-endangered species for many years.

I guess he had to go to Borneo to find it because it wasn't "dangerous enough" to get it from the cradle of the species, the Philippines. Well, welcome to the wonderful world of Liberica coffee, Todd, come on by any time and we will brew a cup for you! ;-)

Holiday coffees

We have created the PIE series of coffees! After extensive R&D and finding sources for real, natural ingredients like pumpkin powder, we are introducing the Pie Coffee line this Fall. First in the series was Pumpkin Pie, which sold out quickly. We WILL have a new, greater supply of the Pumpkin Pie Coffee by next week (~October 28) and hope to get a special price posted on our email sale reminder.

Watch for Apple Pie Coffee and Pecan Pie Coffee... likewise made with all-natural ingredients and no artificial flavors. You will have to supply your own whipped cream!

Tasting Event at the United Nations Plaza

New York fans of Vietnamese Coffee and Cuisine will enjoy this event. Co-sponsored by An Choi Restaurant in NYC, this presentation features original recipes and foods from Vietnam. Check our famous Red Boat Fish Sauce and get free samples of Legendee coffee to drink and G7 Black to take home:

New roast levels coming

Our line of Heirloom fresh-roast coffees has expanded over the last year, but we only offer one roast level for each coffee. Basically, we run tests and find what we consider the optimal profile, and stay with that.

To explore the possibilities of other roast points for these coffees, we recently picked up a sample-quantity-size roaster and have been populating a spreadsheet table with trial roast levels and results. We are excited to find some good options to bring more than one roast to many of our coffees.

So far it's proving to be a lot of fun and we hope to institute a few new options on the website within a couple of weeks.

We are also looking forward to getting in our large shipment of Costa Rica Tarrazu in the next two weeks. This is a coffee with a powerful brown sugar note in City/Medium roast levels. We are also going to try it at Full City + and see how that works as espresso and in blends. Stay tuned!

Welcome the Sumatra Gayo

We are pleased to bring in a new coffee from our Sumatra source for Kopi Luwak and the excellent Lintong. The new Gayo is from the Aceh region, and is a mix of Tim-tim/Djember/Ateng varietals. It is processed by what they call the "wet hull" method, which yields a deeply complex and earthy profile.

We took the Gayo on because it has a sharp initial "attack" on the senses combined with the back-palate richness familiar to Sumatran coffees. It has no muddiness in its taste profile, due to exceptional care to the bean moisture content and processing.

As a single-source coffee, it is a departure from our usual flavor profiles, being nothing like most Vietnamese coffees. While most of our customers look to us for low-acid, smooth yet rich coffees, sometimes people ask for something bolder and stronger, and want a little more acidity or bite. Single-source Gayo provides that. It can be brewed extra-strength or as an espresso that is bold and a little pleasantly bitter.

In the Gayo Blend, we have balanced it with Philippine Organic Robusta and Vietnamese Excelsa to create a full-palate SE Asian "fusion" experience that every coffee lover seems to enjoy. We are putting the single-source and blend up on the web this week, and we will make samples available on our free samples page as soon as we can gear up to do so.

Click here to see the Gayo listing.