Honduras Coffee: Best Single Origin Spotlight Guide

While not very famous, Honduras has become one of the top 10 coffee exporters in the world. In 2022, Honduras exported $1.7 billion worth of coffee, a 32.8% increase compared to 2021 exports.

While the popularity of Honduran coffee has been increasing in recent years, people still know more about Ethiopian or Costa Rican coffee. This has much to do with the challenges farmers in the Honduran coffee industry face, including the difficulty of exporting their products and the belief that Honduran coffee loses quality fast. 

In this article, you'll learn about the history, challenges, and flavors of Honduran coffees, which processing methods are used, and how to brew Honduran coffee best. You'll also learn why there was an issue with quality in the past and how the country improved.

While no official records confirm it, it is widely believed that Spanish traders first introduced coffee to Honduras in the late 1700s. 

In the 1800s, the first Honduran farmers began to grow Honduran coffee beans, but back then, coffee wasn't meant to be a success in this country. The Honduran people needed to make cash to overcome poverty - and the banana was better suited for that. For a long time, bananas were the country's cash cow. If you buy bananas from Chiquita or Dole, you likely have tried a Honduran banana already.

It was only in the late 1900s that coffee started to become more important for the Honduran economy. It was also when the whole world became more interested in drinking coffee.

Sadly, it still wasn't meant to be a success story: In 1998, 80% of all coffee plants were destroyed by Hurricane Mitch. As if that wasn't enough, coffee rust, poor infrastructure, and greedy smugglers turned the lives of many coffee farmers into a nightmare.

In the early 2000s, things finally started to look much better. This was mainly thanks to the foundation of the Honduran Coffee Institute: the Instituto Hondureño del Café (IHCAFE). 

The IHCAFE worked tirelessly to improve the Honduran coffee industry. This included connecting farms with better infrastructure and looking at ways to make coffee production sustainable in the long run.

The yearly Cup of Excellence Honduras competition is part of these efforts and one of the reasons why Honduran coffee is gaining more attention internationally.

Today, coffee provides one million jobs, mainly on small farms, and contributes about 38% of agricultural GDP to the Honduran economy.

Honduran coffee is grown at three different altitudes and processed in different ways. Various coffee varieties are grown in Honduras, so there isn't just one simple way to describe coffee from this country. 

You can find coffee with tropical fruity flavors, hints of citrus and honey, and hints of sweet fruit with floral notes. Some beans turn into a Honduran coffee with tasting notes of walnut, milk chocolate, vanilla, and lemon. But you can also find coffees with hints of brown sugar, graham crackers, or even rice pudding. 

As you may know, how a bean is roasted greatly influences what the final cup will taste like. Depending on the roasting method, a bean grown in the same region can taste quite different. You want to use the roasting level that brings out most of the original flavor of Honduran coffee beans.

• Light Roast: A light roast is ideal for coffee beans from regions that produce coffee with hints of fruit, nuts, and/or floral notes.
• Medium Roast: A medium roast is great if you want to focus on a bean's citrus acidity, notes of milk chocolate, and tropical fruits.
• Dark Roast: A dark roast is best for beans with notes of chocolate, toasted nuts, and richer fruit (like berries as opposed to citrus and tropical fruits).

Honduran coffee is separated into three different categories based on the altitude at which the Honduran coffee beans are grown: 

• Strictly high-grown (at least 1,300 meters above sea level)
• High-grown (between 1,200 to 1,300 meters above sea level)
• Central Standard (below 1,200 meters above sea level)

Copan

Altitude: 1,000 to 1,500 meters above sea level

Varieties: Catuai, Pacas, Bourbon, Typica

Flavor Profile: Bright, citrusy acidity, medium body, usually with notes of chocolate and caramel.

Good to know: Copan is a tourist magnet because of its Maya ruins and is on the border with Guatemala. The area is also famous for producing some of the best Honduran coffees.

Santa Barbara

Altitude: 1,000 to 1,500 meters above sea level

Varieties: Catuai, Pacas, Bourbon, Typica

Flavor Profile: Bright acidity, full body, flavors can include tasting notes of chocolate and caramel.

Good to know: Santa Barbara is part of Copan but deserves a special mention because coffees from here often win awards in Honduras and internationally.

Montecillos

Altitude: 1,200 to 1,600 meters above sea level

Varieties: Bourbon, Catuai, Caturra, Pacas

Flavor Profile: Bright acidity, medium body, and flavors that can include peach and apricot, chocolate, and nutty undertones.

Good to know: Montecillos is home to the highest coffee farms in Honduras and is known for producing great Honduran coffee.

Marcala

Altitude: 1,300 to 1,500 meters above sea level

Varieties: Bourbon, Catuai, Caturra, Pacas

Flavor Profile: Balanced cup with medium acidity, medium body, and flavors ranging from nutty and chocolatey to notes of caramel and fruit.

Good to know: Marcala is part of Montecillos, but it is special because it is the first area in Honduras where Honduran coffee received a Denomination of Origin (in 2005). This means that only coffee that truly comes from Marcala is allowed to be called "Café Marcala".

El Paraiso

Altitude: 1,000 to 1,400 meters above sea level

Varieties: Catuai, Caturra, Parainema

Flavor Profile: Bright acidity, medium body, and sweet flavors that can include citrus, floral, and caramel notes.

Good to know: El Paraiso is one of the biggest coffee-producing regions in Honduras and borders Nicaragua. It is the only region that doesn't grow any Bourbon beans.

Comayagua

Altitude: 1,100 to 1,400 meters above sea level

Varieties: Typica, Catuai, Bourbon

Flavor Profile: Balanced acidity, full body, and robust flavor, generally on the sweet and citrusy side.

Good to know: This region is the home to Honduras’ old AND new capital city. 

Opalaca

Altitude: 1,100 to 1,500 meters above sea level

Varieties: Bourbon, Caturra, Typica

Flavor Profile: Balanced cup with medium acidity, medium body, and complex flavors that can include fruity and nutty tones.

Good to know: Opalaca is on the border with El Salvador.

Ocotepeque

Altitude: 1,200 to 1,800 meters above sea level

Varieties: Bourbon, Catuai, Typica

Flavor Profile: Balanced acidity, medium body, and flavors that include caramel, hints of rice pudding, and mild spices.

Good to know: This South-Western Honduran region borders Guatemala and El Salvador. Its volcanic soil is particularly nutrient-rich, which makes for ideal coffee-growing conditions.

Honduran Coffee Varietals

Bourbon, Caturra, and Catuai make up 90% of all Honduran coffee beans. Pacas and Typica, plus some lesser-known hybrid beans, make up the rest. Let's take a brief look at the five main varietals.

• Bourbon: Bourbon is among the world's oldest and most popular coffee varieties. It is known for its complex flavor profile, with chocolate, caramel, and citrus notes. Bourbon is quite resistant to disease, which is important in Honduras because the country often suffers from coffee rust.
• Caturra: Caturra is a mutation of Bourbon. It was discovered in Brazil in the early 1900s and is also known for its disease resistance. Caturra coffee has a fruity flavor profile with notes of berries and flowers.
• Catuai: Catuai is a cross between Caturra and Mundo Novo (which is a cross between Bourbon and Typica). It is similar to Caturra but has a slightly milder flavor profile.
• Pacas: Pacas was discovered in El Salvador in the 1940s. Its high quality and resistance to coffee leaf rust are why it is grown in Honduras. Pacas coffee has a sweet and fruity flavor profile with notes of chocolate and nuts.
• Typica: Typica is one of the most important coffee varieties in the world because it is the "parent" of so many other varieties. It is known for its complex flavor profile, with chocolate, caramel, and nuts notes. It is somewhat disease-resistant but doesn't yield as much as other varieties.

Honduras is a country in Latin America with a tropical climate. Some regions are drier than others, but you get lots of rain in most parts of the country, even without the rainy season. Descriptions range from "wet" to "seriously wet". 

This influences coffee processing methods. The natural process, i.e., drying coffee cherries under the same, isn't always possible, so Honduran coffee farmers had to adapt to their circumstances.

This means that most Honduran coffee is wet processed via the washed method, as it takes less time to dry just the coffee beans instead of whole coffee cherries. While the washed process is the main method, some farms also use the honey process, a hybrid of washed and natural processing methods.

Which brewing method you use for your morning cup depends mainly on your preferences and your home equipment (or what you're willing to invest in). Of course, also give the traditional Honduran method of brewing a go! 

The traditional method is called Chorreador, and all you need for this is a jar or a cup, a cloth filter, ground coffee beans, and hot (but not boiling) water. It's fairly easy: Put the cloth filter on top of your cup, add a suitable amount of ground coffee beans, and slowly pour over hot water. Let the water drip through the filter into your cup, and repeat as often as needed to fill your cup. 

If you prefer more familiar methods, you can try:

• Drip coffee: This is a fairly basic method. Put a paper filter in the machine's filter compartment, add ground coffee, and put water in the tank - press the button, and the machine will do all the work.
• Pour over: This is similar to drip coffee, but it's manually done. That's where tools like the V60 come in handy, but you can use any funnel as long as it can fit a coffee filter. Instead of a machine doing the work, you're the one who slowly pours water over the ground coffee until the cup is as full as you want it to be.
• French Press: Also fairly simple. Just add the ground coffee to the bottom of the jar, pour in hot water, let the plunger and mesh filter sit on top, and then press it down after a couple of minutes.
• Moka Pot: This requires a few more steps and can be messy if you don't know what you're doing. You need a Moka pot, cold water, ground coffee, and a stovetop. Fill the bottom chamber of the Moka pot with water, add coffee grounds to the filter basket, screw the top and bottom chambers together, and place the Moka pot on the stovetop over medium heat. The coffee will drip into the top chamber once it's brewed.