Costa Rica Tarrazu Aris® Red Honey

Size: 200g

Tasting Note: Tangerine | Grapefruit | Raisin | Honey | Black Tea

Varietal: Catuai, Villa Sarchi

Processing Method: Red Honey

Growing Altitude: 1650m

The name Aris® was inspired by Aristaeus, the heir of Apollo the God of Sun in ancient Greek mythology. Aristaeus was an expert bee farmer and honey collector – thus, a perfect name for a brand that intends to deliver the classic, authentic Costa Rican honey process notes rather than imparted flavours from extended fermentation or alternative processing methods. 

The coffee industry in Costa Rica has gone through something that all coffee lovers should know – the micro mill revolution. Sick of being haggled and under-appreciated, the Costa Rican coffee producers decided to break away from large, corporative processing stations.

Instead, they set up family-oriented or community-oriented processing stations (often organising themselves in an association or cooperative), where capable farms built their own mills, and even more capable farms will help several neighbouring farms to process the coffees.

Additional Notes on Red Honey Processing Method

Costa Rica has long known to be the home of honey processed coffees – so much that the producers disagreed with each other on how honey processed should be defined, each taking into consideration different factors like the amount of mucilage left on the seed, the drying time and the bean-flipping frequency.

The passions and disagreements ended in a rather interesting result where different colours are used to categorize different levels of honey processes: white, yellow, orange, gold, red, black and others. The deeper the colour, the more flesh is allowed to adhere to the beans during the drying process.

Red honey process means that a moderate amount of fruit flesh or “honey” was allowed to adhere to the beans during drying. This batch of Aris® we have looks reddish in overall as it is covered by a very thin layer of silverskin, shouting red honeyyyyy with just the visual itself.