Harvest Season
| Varietal(s) | Catuai, Caturra |
|---|---|
| Processing | Eco-pulped and dried in the sun and mechanical driers |
CoopeDota was established in 1960, and it is still run by the farmers who built it. When a cooperative has been doing the same work for sixty-five years, the interesting question is not whether it exists but whether it kept up.
It did. CoopeDota has a certified carbon-neutral mill, the first of its kind, which uses hydro-powered energy, water-efficient eco-pulpers — also called demucilagers — and mechanical dryers fueled by the coffee parchment stripped off the beans. The mill runs on recycled water throughout, and the cooperative manages trash pickup for the town of Santa María de Dota. It also runs an agriculture supply store, a tourism department, three cafes, and a barista training center. None of that is coffee in the cup, but it is a reasonable proxy for whether a producer group is organized.
This coffee comes from roughly 900 members living throughout the canton of Dota, in the province of San José. Those are family farms, and the members spend the year on farm management, then bring their cherry to the mill during harvest. Centralizing the mill is the point: traceability and quality control happen in one place rather than in a hundred.
Processing is eco-pulped and dried in the sun and mechanical dryers. Cherries are floated first, so damaged and less dense beans float off and never enter the lot. Then depulped, washed, and mechanically dried. After drying the coffee rests in silos for at least a month before milling, and at milling it is dehulled and sorted by weight and color. The varieties are Catuai and Caturra, grown between 1,550 and 1,950 meters.
The variety here is a peaberry. A cherry normally produces two beans, flat-sided where they press against each other. Occasionally only one seed develops, and what you get is a round bean — denser, more uniform, and more concentrated, because one seed got everything the cherry had. Peaberries are a small fraction of any harvest and get sorted out during grading.
Costa Rican coffee from Dota is typically clean and sweet, with stone fruit and a fine citrus acidity. The high altitude gives the bean enough density to hold that shape.
When we roast this, we taste orange, sweet cinnamon, cashew butter, and bittersweet chocolate. Orange leads, cinnamon warms the middle, cashew butter gives it weight, and bittersweet chocolate runs through the finish.
We Roast It This Way
We roast it this way: to a Medium Light roast. This is a specialty-grade green coffee. We recommend targeting 400–420°F charge temperature and aiming for City+ to Full City for a balanced cup that honours the origin character. First crack typically appears around 385–395°F (varies by roaster type and drum speed). Development time: 1:00–1:45 after first crack.
Light-medium to preserve the bright citrus — peaberries roast evenly thanks to their round structure, but the window between orange and generic roast character is maybe fifteen seconds wide
