Meet the Makers: The Faces Behind Our Best-Selling Coffee Bags
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The power of coffee lies in its ability to unite humans across cultures. 787 Coffee was built on the foundation of for humans, by humans. Where love and connection is the reason we make specialty coffee. Over the years, we’ve worked alongside many incredible co-workers, but few stories are as unique as Wanda and Angel.
This couple has been with us since we opened our coffee farm Hacienda Iluminada in 2014. Angel being our Farm Director and Wanda our master roaster. Their love for agriculture, Puerto Rican coffee, and their community has shaped the flavors enjoyed by thousands of caffeinated humans every single day. Their dedication reminds us that, just like our freshly roasted coffee, with time, love, patience, and consistency, you can bear fruits that bring joy and impact to the world.
A Shared Journey in Coffee
Wanda, our master roaster, and Angel, our dedicated farm director, have been with us since the very beginning, representing the full journey from farm to cup. Their collaboration is the secret to our delicious single-origin Puerto Rican coffee.
Angel: The Soul of Hacienda Iluminada
As our farm director at Hacienda Iluminada, Angel's role is far more than just “managing” a farm; he is the guardian of our specialty coffee's quality from the planting of the seed. Some of the things he does to bring 787 Coffee to life is.
Cultivation and Coffee Quality: He oversees the health of our coffee trees, ensuring they receive the proper nutrients and care. This includes maintaining soil health, pruning coffee trees to maximize yield and quality, and implementing sustainable farming practices with the team that protects our unique Puerto Rican ecosystem.
Harvest Oversight: Angel directs the harvesting process, making sure only the ripest, reddest coffee cherries are hand-picked. This selective harvesting is crucial for producing specialty coffee and is a key step in achieving 787 Coffees signature flavor.
Post-Harvest Processing: After harvesting, Angel supervises the crucial steps of preparing the green coffee beans. His expertise ensures that the green beans are perfectly processed, maintaining their quality and preparing them to be handed to his other half that creates the roasting magic.
Wanda: The Master of Flavor
Wanda is the artist who transforms Angel's hard work into the best coffee you will ever drink. She takes the beautiful green beans and applies her many years of experience and knowledge of roasting to bring out the 787 Coffee flavor.
Roasting Expertise: Wanda's primary role is to roast our signature specialty coffee beans to perfection. She understands that each coffee bean from Hacienda Iluminada has a story to tell, and she vigilantly watches the level of the flame while it’s roasting. She checks the coffee beans and makes sure that it’s in a perfect medium roast to highlight the distinct flavors and aromas of our single-origin coffee.
Quality Control: She's our last line of defense, conducting rigorous quality checks on every small batch. This includes cupping sessions where she tastes the freshly roasted coffee to ensure it meets our high standards for a truly exceptional farm to cup experience.
A Perfect Partnership
The synergy between Angel and Wanda is what sets our coffee apart. Angel's dedication to growing the highest quality specialty coffee beans on the farm provides Wanda with the perfect canvas. In turn, Wanda's skill in roasting ensures that all of Angel's hard work is showcased in every cup of coffee YOU enjoy. This shared vision of care and quality is what makes 787 Coffee more than a coffee run. It is coffee that started by love and transferred to love. That’s why we're so proud to offer the best coffee for those who try it.
The Honey Process and Care at Origin
One of the most important methods is the honey process, a style of coffee processing that requires immense patience and precision, and the showcases the beautiful collaboration between Angel and Wanda.
Angel's Role: Nurturing the Sweetness
Angel's work begins immediately after the harvest. Unlike other methods where all the fruit pulp is removed, for the honey process, Angel's team carefully removes only the outer skin of the cherry, leaving a specific amount of the mucilage—a sticky, honey-like substance—intact around the coffee bean. He then oversees the drying process. The coffee beans, still coated in this sugary layer, are spread out on African beds which are a wooden frame with a mesh or screen material stretched across the top, and are raised off the ground.
Angel's expertise is crucial here; he constantly monitors the coffee beans, raking and turning them at just the right intervals to ensure even drying and prevent mold. This careful preservation of the mucilage is what gives honey-processed coffee its characteristic sweetness and body. Angel’s dedication at this stage directly impacts the final flavor profile, ensuring that the natural sugars are sealed into the coffee bean.
Wanda's Role: Unlocking the Flavors
Wanda takes over once the honey-processed beans are dried and hulled. With these coffee beans, her approach to roasting is uniquely adapted to highlight the work Angel has already put in. The natural sugars that were preserved during the drying process require a different roasting curve to avoid scorching while fully developing the complex flavors.
Wanda’s skill lies in knowing exactly how to apply heat to caramelize these sugars, transforming them into the rich, complex notes of butter, citrus, and dark chocolate that are the hallmarks of this process. She ensures that the final stage of our single-origin coffee not only tastes impeccable, but also tells the complete story of the land and the careful, detailed work that went into it.
The honey process, as practiced by Angel and Wanda, is a beautiful example of their combined expertise. Angel’s tremendous care for the coffee’s origin preserves the natural sweetness, while Wanda’s expert roasting unlocks its full potential, creating a specialty coffee that is both a tribute to Puerto Rican terroir and a testament to their shared love and passion.
Roasting with Flavor and Balance
When the coffee beans finally reach to Wanda's roaster, the real artistry begins. Our medium roast is what makes 787 Coffee the best-selling coffee bags, and this isn't by chance. Her mastery of this roasting level is what allows the origin flavors to shine while developing a rich, full-bodied cup of coffee.
Here are five special points on why this approach is her secret to crafting the perfect specialty coffee:
1. A Perfect Balance of Flavor: A medium roast is the ideal sweet spot. It allows the coffee's natural sugars to caramelize, creating a balanced flavor profile that brings out sweetness without the sharp acidity found in lighter roasts or the overpowering bitterness of darker roasts.
2. Highlights the Terroir: Our medium roast showcase's the unique qualities of our Puerto Rican coffee beans from Hacienda Iluminada. It's the perfect way to unlock and preserve the distinct flavor notes, like buttery smoothness, dark chocolate, and a hint of citrus, that tell the story of the mountains where the coffee was grown.
3. Enhances Body and Mouthfeel: This level of roast develops the coffee's body, giving it a rich, substantial feel on your palate. It's how we achieve that satisfying, smooth finish that makes our coffee so special.
4. Versatility for Any Brew: The balanced nature of a medium roast makes it incredibly versatile. Whether you prefer a pour-over, a French press, or an espresso, our freshly roasted coffee beans will provide a consistent and delicious experience every time that will make you say WOW.
5. The Mark of an Expert Hand: Ultimately, the art of making a medium roast is a testament to Wanda's skill. It requires precision to stop the roast at just the right moment, before the coffee beans lose their unique origin character. This delicate process ensures you get the best coffee in every cup.
From Their Hands to Thousands of Cups
Over the years, Wanda and Angel’s work has traveled far beyond the farm. Their careful timing, attention to detail, and devotion to coffee have woken up bed heads, inspired conversations, and comforted late nights for thousands of caffinated humans. Every sip of 787 Coffee carries their fingerprints , a reminder that the best coffee isn’t made in machines, but in the hands of makers who pour their hearts into the craft.
Love and Coffee
Wanda and Angel are the heartbeat of Hacienda Iluminada, creating thousands of beautiful memories and smiles at 787 Coffee. Their story shows how love can be transferred into anything we do, we just happen to choose coffee.
Get to know our single origin coffee beans they’ve perfected. Shop online today.
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To summarize…
1. A Shared Passion for Quality
Wanda, the master roaster, and Angel, the farm director, are truly the heartbeat of 787 Coffee. Their story is one of shared passion. They believe that to make truly great coffee, you have to nurture every single bean. Angel's job begins in the soil, ensuring the coffee trees are healthy and the farming is sustainable. Wanda takes over when the beans are green, using her expert knowledge to create the best coffee. This partnership is what makes every cup of their freshly roasted coffee so balanced and delicious.
2. A Meticulous Process from Farm to Cup
Every bag of 787 Coffee represents a journey from the field to your mug, guided by the expert hands of Angel and Wanda. Angel meticulously cultivates the coffee plants, from managing soil health to hand-picking only the ripest cherries. Once the beans are ready, Wanda takes over, using her keen senses and deep understanding of roasting to transform them into specialty coffee. It's this dedication to their individual crafts—Angel's nurturing on the farm and Wanda's artistry in the roaster—that creates our delicious single-origin coffee.
3. The Balance in Every Cup
Ultimately, it’s the balance between Angel’s meticulous care at the farm and Wanda’s expert roasting that creates the rich, full-flavored coffee you enjoy. Every cup is a testament to their shared commitment to quality and their passion for creating the best coffee.
