El Salvador and the Pacamara
Origins · El Salvador
El Salvador and the Pacamara
A guide to Salvadoran coffee — its volcanoes, its old Bourbon, the giant Pacamara, and how to brew it.
8 min read
Photo: Emberlifi · CC BY-SA 4.0
El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, and coffee runs all the way through its history — for a century it more or less was the economy, for better and for worse. It grows less than it once did now, but what it grows is special: some of the oldest Bourbon trees left anywhere, shade-grown on volcanic slopes, and the giant, singular variety this little country gave the world — the Pacamara.
01 — History & place
A short history of Salvadoran coffee
Coffee became El Salvador's fortune in the late nineteenth century, replacing indigo as the country's great export, and by the early twentieth it was one of the largest producers in the world. That wealth was concentrated in very few hands — the landowning families who controlled the coffee also controlled the country — and the inequality it entrenched was one of the roots of the long, brutal civil war of the 1980s, which badly damaged the industry.
Since the war, El Salvador has grown less coffee: land was lost, trees aged, and the leaf-rust epidemic of 2012 and 2013 hit especially hard. But something else happened too. Freed from the race for sheer volume, growers turned to quality — to the old Bourbon that had survived on their farms, to shade and to careful processing — and rebuilt a reputation on being small, distinctive and fine rather than simply big.
El Salvador has also long been a place of coffee science. Its national research institute identified the Pacas variety and, in the 1950s, bred the Pacamara — two home-grown varieties that have travelled the coffee world.
Where El Salvador grows its coffee
Almost all of it grows on the volcanoes. A chain of them runs the length of this small country, and coffee climbs their slopes, mostly between about 500 and 1,600 metres, much of it under shade. The national institute divides it into six regions.
The largest and most celebrated is Apaneca-Ilamatepec in the west — the high country around the Santa Ana volcano and Lake Coatepeque, source of the brightest, most complex coffees. Nearby lies Alotepec-Metapán on the Honduran border, while around the capital sits the El Bálsamo-Quezaltepeque range and, to its east, the Chichontepec volcano above San Vicente. Further east again, Tecapa-Chinameca is sweet and fruit-forward, and remote Cacahuatique, up in Morazán, gives a soft, caramel cup.
That shade — El Salvador's farms are among the most forested in the region — protects the coffee and the birds alike, and the cherries beneath it are picked selectively, by hand.
02 — Plant & process
Bourbon, Pacas and the Pacamara
El Salvador is, gloriously, a country of old Bourbon. Where most origins long ago replaced their heirloom trees, a great deal of El Salvador is still planted with classic Bourbon — which is a large part of why its coffee is so reliably sweet and balanced. On top of that heritage sit two varieties the country bred itself. Pacas is a natural dwarf mutation of Bourbon, found on a Salvadoran farm in 1949, compact and productive but still sweet. And the Pacamara, created in 1958 by crossing Pacas with the enormous-beaned Maragogipe, produces spectacularly large beans and a wild, complex, often floral and herbal cup that has made it a competition favourite around the world.
How Salvadoran coffee is processed
The classic Salvadoran coffee is washed — pulped, fermented, rinsed and dried — for a clean, sweet, transparent cup. But the country has also become known for lovely honey processing, drying the coffee with some of its sticky mucilage still on to add body and syrupy sweetness, and naturals are on the rise too. Whichever way, the coffee is dried slowly on patios and raised beds.
Slow, even drying is where a careful producer protects all that Bourbon sweetness before the coffee is milled and graded.
Harvest: one dry-season crop
El Salvador has a single harvest through the dry season, roughly from November to March. It follows the altitude — the lower slopes are picked first, the high country around Apaneca last.
03 — Taste & quality
What Salvadoran coffee tastes like
The classic Salvadoran cup is Bourbon at its most charming: sweet and balanced and gentle, with caramel and milk chocolate, red apple and a soft citrus lift, all on a smooth medium body. It is easy, approachable, comforting coffee — rarely showy, always likeable. Then there is the Pacamara, which is the opposite of gentle: big-bodied and complex, with intense floral and herbal notes and tropical or stone fruit, a variety that can be genuinely wild in the cup. High-grown Apaneca lots sharpen everything up, and the country's honeys add a syrupy, fruity sweetness.
| Apaneca-Ilamatepec | Bright, complex and high-grown |
| El Bálsamo | Balanced, sweet and classic |
| Chichontepec | Rounded and chocolatey |
| Tecapa-Chinameca | Sweet and fruit-forward |
| Cacahuatique | Soft, with caramel sweetness |
Roast should respect the sweetness. Because so much of the appeal is that clean Bourbon sugar, El Salvador is usually roasted light to medium; a complex Pacamara in particular is best kept lighter, so its florals survive.
Grading: SHG and altitude
El Salvador grades its coffee by altitude, the Central American shorthand for density. The top tier is Strictly High Grown, or SHG, from farms above roughly 1,200 metres, where the beans ripen slowly and grow dense; below it come High Grown and lower grades. As everywhere, the grade tells you about altitude, not flavour — for that, look to the variety (is it Bourbon, or a Pacamara?), the region, the process and the cupping score.
04 — Into the cup
How to brew Salvadoran coffee
Classic Salvadoran Bourbon is one of the most forgiving, versatile coffees to brew — its sweetness and balance make it lovely as an everyday espresso or filter. Save your most careful pour-over for the special lots: a complex Pacamara, or a bright high-grown Apaneca, both of which reward a clean brew that shows their detail. The four methods below cover it, with a starting recipe for each.
Rinse the paper filter, add 20 g of grounds, bloom with 40 g of water for 40 seconds, then pour slowly up to 320 g. A clean V60 or Kalita is where a Pacamara's florals and a high-grown Apaneca's fruit really come through — the best way to taste the top of El Salvador.
Seat a rinsed filter, add 16 g of grounds and 250 g of water, stir gently and steep for about a minute and a half, then press slowly. Forgiving and quick, it makes the most of a classic Bourbon's caramel sweetness — the easy, everyday way to drink El Salvador.
Add 30 g of coarse grounds and 450 g of water, stir, steep four minutes, skim and decant. The press rounds a sweet Salvadoran Bourbon into something fuller and more chocolatey — a generous, comforting mug for the morning.
Grind fine, distribute evenly and pull 18 g in to 36 g out in 25–30 seconds. A classic Salvadoran Bourbon makes a sweet, balanced, chocolatey shot that is easy to dial in and lovely with milk. If it runs sour, grind finer; bitter, grind coarser.
As a rule, let a sweet everyday Bourbon be your espresso or French press, and save a clean pour-over for a special Pacamara or a bright Apaneca lot. However you brew it, look after the beans — buy them whole, keep them sealed away from heat and light, and use them within a few weeks of roasting. If you'd like to taste El Salvador for yourself, our Salvadoran coffees below are a good place to start.