Behind the Bean: Ana Rosa & Flashlight Coffee

We're thrilled to offer a woman-grown coffee from Flashlight Coffee in San Francisco, CA for the month of October that, true to its notes, is absolutely crushable!

Flashlight is a labor of love from husband and wife duo, Richard & Courtney.   We love their spirit and approach to coffee.  Check out our IG Live chat with them to learn about how they prioritize sustainability & relationships in their sourcing and why they wholeheartedly appreciate early 2000's pop punk.  

Speaking of relationships, Flashlight roasted this coffee from Ana Rosa Izaguirre Trochez in Santa Barbara, Honduras.   Ana Rosa helped her father work on the coffee farm since she was a child. Her father had one of the largest farms in the El Cedral village, she generally had to do the fertilization and pick the cherries on harvest season.

She married at 16 years old and left with her husband to Colón (north coast of the country). They lived there for 14 years until her father suggested they return to on El Cedral and he gave her a hectare of land to cultivate with coffee. Since then Ana Rosa and her husband have worked in the coffee farm.

5 years ago her son-in-law Mario Moreno encouraged her to prepare a micro-lot of specialty coffee and test in the same market that Mario was selling trough Beneficio San Vicente. They quickly demonstrated a natural ability to cultivate excellent coffee and are now buying other plots of land for their sons to develop as well.

Processing Method

The cherries are de-pulped every afternoon, then, the parchment is put into fermentation tanks where it is dry fermented for 14 hours. After, the parchment is rinsed into the tank with a lot of water four times. Next, it´s put inside the parabolic solar dryer for around 15 days, during the dryer the parchment is sorted by hand to remove defective beans.