Costa Rica Las Lajas Anaerobic Honey

This coffee comes from Las Lajas Micromill, one of Costa Rica’s most innovative family-owned coffee producers. The Chacón family pioneered the region’s honey processes and carefully selects coffee cherries while maintaining precise control over fermentation to create distinctive, exceptionally well-balanced microlots.

This lot is called Yellow Diamond and is part of the family’s experimental series of processing methods. The process was developed to highlight the coffee’s sweetness, clarity, and fruit-forward character. Through carefully controlled anaerobic fermentation and slow drying, it creates an elegant, balanced flavour profile in which bright fruit acidity meets deep, caramelised sweetness.

YELLOW DIAMOND ANAEROBIC HONEY 

This coffee undergoes a carefully controlled anerob honey fermentation:

• Cherry Selection
  Only high-Brix, fully ripe cherries are selected.
• Depulping
  The cherries are depulped while retaining 100% of the mucilage. on the beans
• Anaerobic Fermentation
  The coffee is transferred into sealed fermentation tanks without oxygenwhere it ferments for approximately 84 hours.
• Drying
  After fermentation, the coffee is moved to raised drying beds och torkas långsamt under 15-20 dayswith regular turning to ensure even drying.
• Stabilisation
  Once dried, the coffee rests for around 60 days before exportallowing the flavours to stabilise and mature.

ABOUT LAS LAJAS

Las Lajas is located in Sabanilla de Alajuela, Costa Rica, near the foothills of the Poás Volcano. The western part of the Central Valley produces some of Costa Rica’s finest coffees. Francisca and Oscar Chacón are third-generation coffee growers from a family that has cultivated coffee since 1840. When Oscar’s father passed away, Oscar inherited five hectares of land at just 18 years old. Together with his mother, he continued the family legacy. Francisca and Oscar married in 1997. Francisca studied at the University of Costa Rica, earning a degree in agronomy with a specialisation in coffee.

It all begins with their farming practices. Las Lajas is a certified organic farm. As third-generation coffee producers, they focus on protecting the environment while maintaining the highest possible coffee quality. During the 2000s, they expanded their farming operations and began exploring different coffee-processing methods. In 2009, a powerful earthquake struck the country, causing widespread devastation and major power outages—right at the height of the coffee harvest.

Francisca then had the bold idea of drying the coffee with the fruit still surrounding the bean, a method used in parts of Africa where electricity and running water are unavailable during the dry season. They spread the coffee cherries across patios and flat rooftops, as well as on hastily constructed camas africanas—raised African-style drying beds—and left them to dry slowly in the sun. The result was a remarkable, almost black dried coffee cherry, which they named Perla Negra—the Black Pearl. And it tasted incredible! A new chapter in Costa Rica’s coffee history had begun.