Los Abuelos farm and micromill are family projects named for the grandfathers of the current generation, Albaro Abarca Herrera and Leonel Jimenez Abarca. Albaro and Leonel passed their commitment to hard work and honesty to the family, which is the doctrine the current generation used to build their company operated by family members Kamila, Emmanuel, Gustavo, Adolfo, and Seilyn.
Los Abuelos farm was founded in 2002 in the Tarrazú coffee region. Beginning in 2018, the family started their efforts to produce differentiated crops, using quality production practices such as creating their own fertilizers, focusing on soil recovery, and using naturally derived microorganisms to combat pests.
In response to an unstable economic situation and in an effort to more closely control the quality and traceability of their products, the family established Microbenficio Abuelos Café in 2019. Operations at the mill are overseen entirely by mother and daughter team Seilyn and Kamilia. Developing this micromill came with many challenges, including finding clients, engaging in training, and formalizing their operations. In their first year they processed just one small batch of coffee. In their second year of operation they successfully sold two microlots, and today they have grown to process 30% of the family’s production in their own mill. “It was a great challenge given the conditions that the selection takes, harvesting, and [processing] our lots to meet the highest quality standards that we desire. We continue to grow and learn for each harvest to do our job better, increase our quality, and offer a better product,” they tell us.
“We envision continuing to do quality work, growing and thus reaching you, our customers, who are there reading this and feeling part of this story. I can assure you that it is thanks to each of you [that] when you buy our product you have an unimaginable butterfly effect, managing to impact lives, people, and families [more than] economically, because by achieving a better quality of life, human beings can grow comprehensively.”
This lot of Caturra and Catuai coffee underwent Anaerobic Natural processing at Microbenficio Abuelos Café, and was named for Don Antonio, one of the harvesters working at Finca Los Abuelos. The family named this coffee “Antonio’s Anaerobic” in recognition of Don Antonio’s dedication and love for both his work and for the coffee plants. Freshly harvested coffee cherries were fermented in sealed plastic barrels for 72 hours. The fermented coffee was then spread across raised drying beds where it was dried in sun exposure for 25 days.