Pacamara
El Salvador · 1958 · Instituto Salvadoreño de Investigaciones del Café
“A Palm Springs pool at noon. Oversized and unbothered.”
Why this place
A mid-century pool in Palm Springs at noon is not subtle and is not trying to be. Butterfly roof, diving board, a row of Washingtonias, and the San Jacintos going straight up behind it like a stage flat. Everything is oversized, the shadows are black, and it is entirely magnificent.
Pacamara is built to the same brief. The beans are enormous — a cross of compact Pacas onto the giant Maragogipe — and the cup is tropical fruit, berries and chocolate arriving with a body you could stand a spoon in.
It is theatrical, a bit much, and completely convincing. Nobody has ever described a Pacamara as understated.
- In the cup
- Tropical fruit, berries, chocolate, and a body you can lean on. Loud in the best way
- Lineage
- Pacas × Maragogipe — a compact mutant crossed onto a giant
- Grown
- El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua
- Altitude
- 1,200–1,800 m
- Brew it as
- Filter for the fruit, espresso if you are brave. Grind coarser than you think
Our opinion
Grind it coarser than you think. This is the practical thing nobody says. The beans are so large that a grinder set for normal coffee shatters them unevenly, and you get a muddled cup that people blame on the roast.
It also roasts awkwardly — big, dense, uneven beans mean the outside is ready before the inside is, and a lot of Pacamara arrives slightly underdeveloped and tasting of raw peanut. That is a roasting failure, not the variety.
When it is right it is one of the most enjoyable coffees you can buy. Filter for the fruit; espresso is possible and dramatic and will take you three days to dial in.
Sources
Out past the break
The Big-Bean Set
More from The Big-Bean Set