SHB
SHB, strictly hard bean, Arabica coffee designates the highest quality coffee from Guatemala. From within the rain forests on the highest volcanic mountain slopes, Mayan indigenous farmers and their families handpick only the choicest beans.
If you turn to Earth Coffee’s website, Australia, (http://www.earthcoffee.com.au/) you will see a very good website. However, if you click the video in the upper left hand corner, you will also see what is wrong with machine harvested coffee. Note the green (not ripe) beans dominating the tray with a few ripe red cherries mixed in. The machine cannot tell the difference. Now look at the roasted beans as they spill from the roaster. The beans are of slightly different color and size. This means that both ripe and unripe beans were roasted together, or a blend of beans from a different source was roasted together. Neither produces a top quality coffee. That is why the handpicked beans from within the ecosystem of the forest at high altitude produce the best coffee. The very best earns the highest quality designation of SHB, strictly hard beans, single source, above 5.000 ft.
That is also why EFF seeks contributions for a roaster in one of the small high mountain Mayan villages in Guatemala. These indigenous family farmers deserve to participate in the rewards for their extraordinary coffee. They and their families diligently cultivate their precious trees on the steep mountainsides, and they handpick for the very best coffee and the top designation of SHB.
Indigenous Hawaiian families once handpicked from the high volcanic mountains, but no more. Kona, like nearly all modern coffee, lives by mechanized farming in open fields. Kona still has the reputation, and it is good coffee, but with the above limitations. The high volcanic Sierras of Guatemala and Chiapas with their SHB enjoy the reality.
