Nicaragua - La Cascada

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Omni, suitable for filter and sweet classic style espresso

Light-Medium Roaster Influence:
Roasted slightly slower and longer than our other single origins to aim more towards brown sugar, lower acidity and comforting flavours, without tasting roast character. 

Best rested for: 2 weeks

For Filter: 92°C, 62g/L, coarser ground

For Espresso: 18g, 40g out, 32-34s

We’re tasting: Sweet milk chocolate, with a distinct baked apple character, with some golden raisin & nougat notes. As it cools, some hazelnut praline rounds the cup. Low acidity & syrupy bodied

Traceability:

The Story

When we set out to build our house filter range, we needed coffees that could deliver consistently excellent daily drinking while supporting meaningful change in coffee-growing regions. This lot from La Cascada - our first venture into Nicaraguan coffee - came to us through The Good Sourcing, an independent importer we're excited to work with as we explore new possibilities in Central American coffees. Working with smaller, focused importers often leads us to producers like Max Padilla, who are achieving speciality pricing and value return through careful variety selection and precise processing.

One of the varieties Max is growing is Mundo Maya - an F1 hybrid variety (meaning it's a first-generation cross between two distinct parent varieties). The parent varieties here are a Timor Hybrid descendant and an Ethiopian landrace variety - a combination chosen to provide both disease resistance and cup quality potential. These genetic choices become increasingly relevant as climate pressures on coffee production continue to mount. Nicaragua, as a coffee producing origin is one of the most exposed to climate change, with studies indicating a reduction of up to 40% of the land suitable for growing coffee. Hardy new varieties more able to withstand extreme weather events are sorely needed in response to this; and with this release we’d like to show that it’s still possible to grow delightful quality coffee even at lower altitudes with one such cultivar.

The farm itself sits at 1150-1300 masl in Dipilto's mountain ranges, where several natural springs and waterfalls give the farm its name. When Max took over following his father's passing during COVID, he focused on moving away from commodity market dependence through quality-focused production. The farm's water treatment infrastructure and shade tree coverage represent practical steps toward both quality improvement and environmental stability - particularly relevant given Nicaragua's vulnerability to climate change impacts.

We're roasting this lower altitude lot low & slow compared to our other range, aiming for peak caramels even with a lighter hand on the end result - what we're calling a comfort roast, if you will. We buy coffees for this "house filter" range looking not for super bright acidity or for wild complexity, but for comforting, familiar flavours with heaps of sweetness.

The coffee comes to us through the Bridazul project, which works with around fifty small and medium-sized farms (averaging under 10 hectares) to improve both coffee quality and farm resilience. Their approach includes sharing processing expertise while supporting transitions toward complementary crops - a practical response to the risks of coffee monoculture in Nicaragua's changing climate.

This is a coffee that serves its intended purpose - accessible enough for any brewing method while supporting producers who are adapting to specialty coffee production in challenging circumstances. Whether you're using a batch brewer or French press (and yes, it works well with milk), you're getting a coffee that delivers both in the cup and at origin.