Origin: Los Lirios, Comayagua, Honduras

Producers: Leodan Bautista

Process: Natural

Varieties: Bourbon

Altitude: 1700masl

Importer: Semilla with Sueños de Semilla

Roast: Light-medium

Notes: Russet Apple, Lime Sorbet, Cherry Chocolate

Transparency: We committed to a 8 bag lot at $5.30USD/lb + shipping, storage and brokerage.

Semilla's Farmgate price, 7500 Lempira/quintal green coffee paid to Leodan Bautista
Local farmgate price (2024): 3500 Lempira/quintal parchment coffee
FOB Price: $3.23USD/lb

Leodan Bautista, Los Lirios, Comayagua, Honduras

If you're familiar with our new crowd fav seasonal espresso Hilux, you're familiar with Leodan Bautista! One of the many producers we got to meet during our 2024 trip to Honduras, Leodan really made an impression on us, bringing a fun energy to our time spent with him.

He is a passionate and experienced young producer who is keen to make a name for himself. We're beyond excited to be featuring his coffee and present it under his own name, respecting the work he's put into this beautiful lot.

This coffee is first picked ripe at Leodan's farm El Caliche in Los Lirios. The coffee then undergoes a 65-hour long fermentation process in sealed plastic bags. Afterwards the cherries are dried in a solar dryer on raised African style beds for 22-25 days.

This process brings on big punchy flavors, delivering huge sweetness, and crazy big acidity. In the cup we're finding sweet russet apple, creamy lime sorbet, and classic cherry chocolate.

To the people enjoying his coffee in Canada, Leodan shares this message:

"Greetings, friends, and thank you for helping us on this journey. Your support allows us to continue walking this path alongside your projects. I hope to welcome you to our farms one day!"

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.

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'!