Why altitude changes the cup
A coffee tree at 1,900 metres lives colder than one at 900. The night drops, the plant stops, and the bean takes weeks longer to fill. That delay is the whole thing: the fruit builds sugars slowly and the bean comes out denser, harder, with more inside it.
In the cup that shows up as acidity and sweetness. Not sharp acidity — the acidity of ripe fruit, which is what holds a coffee together as it cools. Low-grown coffee tends to be flatter and quicker: good hot, then gone.
That is why altitude is printed in the margin beside every coffee here, and whyit is only beside the coffees. For cacao it says almost nothing — the best cacao in Ecuador grows near sea level. For a horchata it says nothing at all: one bundle gathers plants from twenty different hillsides.
Variety: which plant it came from
The variety is the cultivar, and Ecuador has more of them than people expect.
- Typica and Bourbon — the old ones. Fewer kilos per hectare, more sweetness. These are what the grandfather planted.
- Caturra and Catuaí — higher yielding, short plants, easy to pick. Most of the coffee drunk in the country.
- Sarchimor and Castillo — leaf-rust resistant. They exist because of a real problem: rust took entire harvests and these hold up.
- Sidra — Ecuadorian, and fashionable for good reason. Floral, delicate, difficult to grow.
- Geisha — the expensive one. Jasmine and bergamot when it goes right, and an expensive disappointment when it does not.
Process: what happened after picking
What happens between the cherry and the dry bean changes the cup as much as the variety does, and it is decided at the farm, not at the roastery.
- Washed — pulped the same day and fermented in water. Clean and clear-edged. The classic approach in Loja.
- Natural — dried with the whole cherry still on. More body, more fruit, more risk: dried badly it over-ferments and is lost.
- Honey — halfway. Pulped, but the mucilage left on. Neither washed nor natural, and despite the name there is no honey in it.
- Anaerobic — fermented in a sealed tank without oxygen. Loud flavours that people either love or refuse.
When it was roasted
Coffee does not spoil, it fades. The first few days it rests and is still degassing; from the first week to the third it is at its best; after that it declines slowly. So every bag says when it was roasted rather than carrying an expiry date that would mean nothing.