El Salvador El Carmen - Anaerobic Natural
Back again for the second time in a year?! I know right, we're absolutely mental! El Carmen left a bean shaped hole in our hearts when it left the roastery earlier this year so we jumped at the chance to bring it back for a second round. Fresh crop, fresh beans and all the fun funky flavours. El Carmen is back baby!
El Salvador El Carmen - Process and Harvest
El Carmen Estate is located in El Salvador’s Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountain range, one of Central America’s prime specialty coffee producing areas. The estate has been farmed by the Alfaro family for over a century.
El Carmen lies in the heart of El Salvador’s main ‘protected highway’ of forest, a part of the Meso-American Biological Corridor System that stretches all the way from Mexico down to Panama. In El Salvador, where more than 80% of the country’s coffee is produced under shade, coffee farms such as El Carmen play a vital role as a sanctuary for hundreds of the migratory and native bird species found in this part of the world.
This lot is comprised of Elite Bourbon (Bourbon Mejorado), a new locally developed varietal. They are tall trees, producing excellent-quality beans. El Carmen has 10 hectares of Elite Bourbon, completely separated from the other varietals on the farm.
During the harvest, the cherries are hand-picked only when perfectly ripe and delivered to the mill located at the farm. The cherries are sorted for quality, then placed into containers with water and a cocktail of mountain microorganisms, fungus, and bacteria to ferment for 192 hours sealed. This slows down the fermentation process and prevents any growth of mould. Afterwards, the cherries are evenly dispersed on raised beds to dry in the open sun for 25 – 30 days, with constant raking to prevent any mould development. Once drying is complete, the coffee is hulled and prepared for export.
Chipp Coffee Co - Roastery Update
We have been so bloody busy! You lot can't seem to get enough of the good beans recently and as the weather gets colder and the nights get longer we're expecting more beans than ever to fly out the doors. We're now roasting an extra day a week because we kept running out! While you lovely bunch were buying more beans than ever our fearless leader and overlord Zach took a lovely trip to Japan for his honeymoon. He had a lovely time and brought back lots of weird and wonderful snacks to keep the rest of us happy.
If you follow us on Instagram, the face of our fresh meat Ghily should already be familiar to you. He's been doing a bang up job spreading the good name of Chipp far and wide including a fun day at London Coffee Festival with the good guys at Brewed By Hand. His entire job is to get Chipp in to every nook and cranny he can find and he's annoyingly good at it! Our roastery manager Rory is knackered keeping up with the massive influx of orders this wonderful gent is bringing in.
What We're Listening To
This months choice comes from our Roastery Manager Rory and it's an unusual one. Let me bring your attention to Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Written by NYTimes best selling author Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl is a book and audiobook series about a man, Carl, and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Donut, who are forced to enter a massive, eighteen-level dungeon that has appeared on Earth. This "dungeon" is actually a galactic reality game show for an alien audience, and their survival depends on progressing through levels by defeating monsters and navigating traps to reach the next level's staircase within a time limit. The series is known for its blend of violent action, absurd humor, and dark existential themes, as it follows Carl and Donut's journey of survival, leveling up, and developing a loyal following in the game.
Its part Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, part Running Man full of insane jokes, demonic battles and intergalactic conspiracies on a massive scale. There's currently 7 books with the 8th coming out mid-2026 and I am OBSESSED!
