El Sauce - Loja, Ecuador

We are extremely excited to announce this special coffee from Ecuador. The information below is courtesy of our importing partners at Coffee Quest: Our El Sauce Communal Lot from Quilanga, Loja, Ecuador is brought to you by coffee producers in and around the sub-region of Quilanga, known as El Sauce. The farms in this region are relatively small, ranging from 1 to 5 Ha and sit at a range of elevations of between 1,700 and 2,100 m.a.s.l. This lot is comprised primarily of traditional Typica or Criollo and Bourbon (70%), with the remaining a mix of Pacas, San Salvador and Catimor (30%). The harvest period in El Sauce is between May and August and the producers generally follow a very similar fermentation and drying process: 24 hours de-pulped and dry fermented, followed by 10-12 days drying, depending on the weather. The Oldest Coffee Growing Region in Ecuador... We decided to name this lot after the town, El Sauce, as we hope to give notoriety to one of the oldest coffee growing regions in the country! Many producers lost a large part of their production, but due to the elevations in El Sauce, many producers were able to maintain a large part of their Typica plots, or “Criollo” as they call the variety locally. We have been working in Quilanga for many years, but this is our 3rd year working this a communal lot from these growers. Each year, we will be diving deeper into Quilanga, continuing to grow this communal lot as a coffee and quality very representative of the region, as well as continue to separate out small holder micro-lots. For this harvest, we did a few yeast inoculation trials with these producers, with some interesting results. However, The Coffee Quest and Capamaco Trading hope to expound upon these yeast inoculations to not only increase the quality, but increase the consistency from lot to lot and year year. We are very excited to offer this lot again and look forward to future harvests from Quilanga!