The Coffee: El Cedron

Importer: Honduras Coffee Alliance

Origin: Yoro, Honduras

Processing: Honey

Varietals: Parainema & Ihcafe90

Tasting: Berry Medley, Cacao Nibs, Melon

The Importer: Honduras Coffee Alliance

It all started in the back play area of a church in Lombard, IL in the early 2000's where Makeworth and Honduran Coffee Alliance met. At the time they didn't know it, but Tim (Makeworth) and Sean (HCA) would go from being youth group kids to eventually working inside the specialty coffee world.

In all seriousness, it's been an amazing re-convergence to have HCA be an importing partner since we opened our roasting operation. Going on a 3rd year of taking some delicious, traceable and impactful coffees is a joy that makes working with coffee so great. Sean and his team continue to pioneer excellent coffees from Honduras in a way that seeks sustainable and meaningful supply chain relationships. 

On the secondary: this coffee shares freight and logistics with Algrano coffee importers. Algrano might have one of the most progressive and creative operation for importing coffees in this era. Truly. They are bringing transparency, financing solutions and partnerships to the next level between producer and roaster and we are grateful for every minute of it. Shout out to David, our rep, who helped facilitate these beautiful coffees.

The Producer: Filander Hernandez

Filander’s life in coffee began at a very young age when he worked on his father's coffee farm. As he grew up, his responsibilities grew as well. What started as a game turned into an exhausting job, and the only relief was that he attended school in February each year. This led Filander to not want to become a coffee farmer when he finished his studies in 1996.

In 1998, while working for an NGO, his father asked him for a loan to help build a road between his father’s corn farm and a neighbor’s farm and eventually he helped negotiate the purchase of that land. Something kept drawing him back to farming and he decided to ask his father if he could take ownership of the property.

There was no coffee plantation on the land. It was used for growing basic crops like corn and beans, and it was heavily deforested. After consulting with some experts to assess the feasibility of growing coffee, he didn't receive a clear indication of whether the land was suitable for this cultivation. There were no coffee farms in the area but he decided farming coffee was what he wanted to do. In the year 2000, he started his first nursery with three thousand coffee seedlings and other timber plants.

Now, twenty-three years later, as he looks at the farm and remembers the mockery from those who passed by and saw a farm being planted where there was none before, he feels proud of the quality of coffee and, above all, the perseverance that has led him and his family to create one of the most distinctive farms in the Yoro department of Honduras.