Guatemala - Paya by Nery Pablo [23/24]

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

High grown coffees from Huehuetenango are some of our personal favourites - super sweet, clean cups, jammy acidity and intriguing floral notes. We’re roasting to emphasise the sweetness -

Best rested for: 2 weeks

For Espresso: 18g in, 42-44g out, 30-34s

For Filter: A classic 60g/L brew is the name of the day.

We’re tasting: Aromas of blackberry, caramel and hibiscus. In the cup, a brown sugar sweetness with a bright summer fruit acidity, ripe red apple and buttery shortbread with a hint of almond butter. In the finish, soft floral notes add complexity. Very easy to drink

Traceability:

Import Partner:

The Story

We’re pretty happy with our copy from last season’s crop so we’re leaving it intact. This year was an interesting one for Guatemala - harvest was delayed due to shifting weather patterns, with late maturation and less concentrated ripening patterns, which typically wouldn’t be the best for quality.

We’ve noticed this year that the consistency of the green coffee was excellent and improved from last year in spite of these challenges. We can put this down to excellent picking from Nery & his wife, as well as improved milling protocols and standards from Primavera. Chapeau to both 

Nery Pablo & Finca Paya:
 
Our co-founder Alex visited Guatemala in 2019 with Primavera coffee, and during this trip he was lucky enough to visit Cooperativa El Sendero, a co-op in Concepción Huista. 

We’ve always loved the profile of high-grown coffee from this region, balanced sweet cups that have a little bit of something for everyone - caramels, soft fruits, florals, sometimes even a little bit of a tropical character. Lower altitude production can tend towards more chocolate and nut flavours intermingled with the soft fruity tones, meaning this region really does have something for everyone. Overall if we wanted a big chuggable mug of batch brew to start our day, from any region of any coffee producing country in the world - it’d probably be a fresh crop Huehue.

With that in mind, we’ve selected this lot from Nery Pablo for that exact purpose - an elegant yet approachable coffee, in an eminently smashable brew. The coffee from the producers in Coop El Sendero, located in Concepcion Huista, has always held a place in our hearts and we’re stoked to get the chance to keep buying, roasting and brewing it. The cooperative, with 196 members including 62 women and 134 men, emphasises gender equality and the empowerment of young coffee producers.

Nery Pablo is a second-generation coffee producer, who inherited a parcel of land in 2010. A few years into his journey, he became a member of the El Sendero Cooperative. This affiliation provided him with invaluable marketing opportunities for his coffee and access to workshops and agronomy expertise, as well as microcredit. As a result, Nery experienced a significant enhancement in both the productivity and quality of his coffee. 

His farm, named "Paya’" — a term from the Popti Mayan language signifying "Birth of the River" — is aptly named after the mountainous region where a river originates, and is a common farm name in the area. 
The family process their coffee at their house where they first pulp the freshly picked coffee (using a machine that removes the seeds from the cherry skin), before employing a slow dry fermentation process, taking 32 hours due to the cool high-altitude conditions. Post-fermentation, the coffee is washed and then soaked in clean water before moving to a patio for drying, a process that takes 5-6 sunny days and requires hourly turning to ensure even drying. This meticulous process contributes significantly to the coffee's dense and layered profile. Nery's wife plays a pivotal role in overseeing the processing and drying phases of the coffee production