Origin: Los Lirios, Comayagua, Honduras

Producers: Leodan Bautista

Process: Washed

Varieties: Bourbon

Altitude: 1700masl

Importer: Semilla with Sueños de Semilla

Roast: Medium ++ for espresso

Notes: Red Apple, Almond, Caramel, Cocoa

Transparency: We committed to a 12 bag lot at $4.50USD/lb + shipping, storage and brokerage.

Semilla's Farmgate price, 7000 Lempira/quintal green coffee paid to Leodan Bautista
Local farmgate price (2024): 3500 Lempira/quintal parchment coffee
FOB Price: $3.17USD/lb

Hilux Espresso, Leodan Bautista, Honduras

If you were to find yourself on the Montecillos mountains in Comayagua, you are likely to see plenty of Hilux's ripping up and down stuffed to the gills with beautiful coffee, and a hard working producer like Leodan behind the wheel! 

During our time in Honduras we spent plenty of time on the back of this hard working truck visiting farm after farm, and to us, it became the symbol of the hard-work that goes into producing green coffee at origin. 

Sueños de Semilla, Comayagua, Honduras

In March of 2024 Kelly and I(Sonny) had the amazing opportunity to travel down to Honduras with Semilla & other roasters(who quickly became good pals!). This trip was an amazing experience, both of us had never visited a coffee producing region, and we were excited for it!

This trip exceeded all expectations. Not only was it an amazing, fun  filled adventure with trudging through wet farms & riding up steep mountain's on the back of a Hilux, it was also one of hardship & emotions, learning first hand the difficulties of being a smallholder producer in an economy that is constantly trying to exploit you.

We traveled across the Montecillos Mountain range in Comayagua with Semilla, Jesus Galeas, life long producer, and partner of Sueños de Semilla, as well as other amazing producers, such as Addonnay, Don Clementino, Danilo, and Jeovanny(our trip wouldn't have been possible or half as fun without these folks.).

Everyday we drove and met with different groups of producers, listening to their stories, hearing about their processing, and having them show us their farms and homes. This is an important part of business for Semilla, having a direct connection with as many of the producers they work with as possible. 

This being the first year of Sueños de Semila, majority of the producers we met were fully processing their coffee down the parchment for the first time. This is super important for producers as it allows them to capture the most profit for their product.

It's very common in Honduras ( and many other producing countries) for producers to sell their cherry to intermediaries, or coyotes, losing much of the profit gained by processing the coffee down to parchment. This is especially bad when the price of coffee is low, and you are a producer in a remote location(we went to some REMOTE locations.), making it difficult to transport your own cherry to town.

With this process, most producers selling to Semilla this year received double the 2024 national farmgate price of 3500 lempiras per carga of parchment, and way more than that if they had sold as cherry, which is impossible for me to calculate, as it would depend on what the intermediary or coyote would have offered them day of.

We left Honduras with a strong desire to better our own business, to do better by the producers we buy from, and to be able to buy more from them. We committed to many lots, including 2 separated lots from Leodan. We believe so much in what Jesus & Semilla are doing, and strongly want to support and work with the producers we met.

Los Lirios, Comayagua, Honduras

One of the many groups of producers we met with was the Los Lirios group. Like our other visits, we started with brewing and sharing coffee at their hamlet. We then headed into the farm, which was filled with delicious Citrus, Jesus spent majority of the time finding ripe oranges for everyone to eat. 

The Los Lirios farm was absolutely stunning, with  amazing cross cropping and beautiful coffee trees. They had also built some stunning raised beds where they were fermenting cherry for a natural processed lot ( keep your eyes peeled for that ;] ).

During this time I spent a lot of time with Leodan, who, for a lack of a better description, was hilarious. We quickly bonded, taking cheeky photos and sharing our love of Toyota trucks( he had a super cool Hilux, and drove us around in his uncles land cruiser).

He is a young multi-generational farmer who has always strived to try and produce specialty coffee, but has constantly hit roadblocks along the way. He was slightly skeptical of the project to begin with, which is understandable in his position, but he stuck it out and brought even more coffee than expected to Jesus Galeas, who was managing all the sampling for Semilla.

We were able to purchase two separated lots from Leodan, a natural and a washed, as well as the community lot Los Lirios for Big sipper, which he contributed two separate lots too as well. This kind of purchasing will be life changing for Leodan and his family, being able to sell four complete lots at high specialty prices is simply amazing, and I’m so happy we’ve been able to have them.

I wanted to be able to buy as much from him as we could, and an approachable, almost can’t complain-esq profile was what I thought would do the best job of being able to move through plenty of his coffee year after year.

The washed Bourbon lot that is in Hilux is showing absolutely lovely in an espresso, with jammy apple notes, rich caramels, fatty almond, and rich cocoa. A perfect step-up from a standard house espresso, we’ll be pulling this until it’s gone at Cafe Goodluck!

Summary

There is obviously a lot I could go on about regarding our trip and experiences in Honduras, but I'll save that for our other releases. If you made it all the way down here, thank you. If you wish to read more about Semilla and their work in Honduras definitely check out their website, they're way better writers than me ;).

https://www.semilla.ca/projects/546cJP6GluJc1SKyotBciK

Happy Sippin'!