La Vuelta Café a España:The Coffee tour to Spain

Stage1 : Acid Cafe, Madrid

Acid , The Cafe

Minimalist, sleek and edgy. That’s the feeling I got when I walked into Acid Cafe, Madrid a specialty coffee place in the capital city of Spain. A short walk away from the Reina Sofia, Acid Cafe is a little bit secluded from the main streets, hidden in one of Madrid’s many cobblestoned & hilly roads. It’s almost impossible to get there unless you’re really keen on tasting some amazing manual brews.

Flavio Mir, the young barista is super friendly and showed the selection of coffees and recommended what I could take home for home brewing. Most importantly, this coffee Miramar was sold out and he came all the way to their new bakehouse which had a larger collection of coffees to get me one. Flavio is passionate about coffee, new languages and everything about fresh experiences. He described coffee beans by their flavour notes & textures : citrusy, fruity or smoother, bodied. The name Acid comes from coffee description – good coffee is usually described by its acidity. As a manual filter coffee connoisseur myself, it’s a name I could easily relate to!

The cafe’s selection of food is seasonal and is meant to pair with its rotating selection of coffee from La Cabra, a roaster based in Aarhus, Denmark. Acid is the only café in Madrid that offers the Nordic roaster with a super short menu. I paired my Coffee with Cinnamon Roll for having a nice FIKA time in Madrid.

Acid Bakehouse with Flavio

Acid Cafe with the Thinking Fede

Cinnamon Roll for the best FIKA experience :-)

Miramar, El Salvador : The Farm

This black honey Bourbon lot showcases dark, sweet and complex dark fruit, with notes of plum, raisin and chocolate liqueur.

A rich and dark fruit dominated cup from the San Salvador Volcano, produced by the Alfaro family.

The Miramar farm is the most recent project by the Alfaro family, some of the pioneers of coffee in El Salvador. In the late 1800’s, Antonio Jose Alfaro purchased lands from small farmers who were leaving the region, those who had been unsuccessful with coffee. He believed that these lands could be successfully cultivated, and set about creating a detailed and methodic approach that runs in the family to this day. Over 100 years later, Antonio’s great grandson Fernando continues in the family footsteps with his farms, spanning several of El Salvador’s growing regions.

Miramar is Fernando’s newest project, inherited from his wife’s family in 2020.

HONEY BOURBON by Fernando Alfaro

The small Miramar plot was inherited from Fernando’s wife’s side of the family, who are also long time coffee producers. The farm had been abandoned for many years, meaning that the coffee plantations were in bad condition, but the soils were full of organic material. Fernando saw the opportunity here, with fertile soils, high altitude and excellent native shade, to create excellent quality. He set about replanting the farm with high quality varietals, and has dubbed Miramar his ‘Cup of Excellence’ farm. He hopes to compete for top awards in the coming years, but for now, most of the trees are very young, and yielding very small harvests. Even still, several lots from Miramar advanced to the national stages of the Cup of Excellence in 2022.

This lot of Bourbon was processed using a honey method, with a great deal of sticky fruit mucilage left on during the drying. This wealth of sugary fuel for fermentation means a deep and complex cup, with rich notes of stewed plum, raisins and chocolate liqueur.

Technical Data

• Producer:  Fernando Alfaro

• Region:  Quezaltepec

• Altitude:  1600 masl

• Varietal: Bourbon

• Process: Honey