Discover the history of our company
Strange as it may seem, the idea to elaborate a high-quality coffee arose at the moment that we saw 85% of our plantation destroyed after the passage of Hurricane Maria (2017). It was not the feeling of grief but a strong desire of seeing our coffee plants thriving again that took the upper hand. And here we are, four years later, offering you a delicious cup of Puerto Rican coffee!
The coffee production process requires many heads and many hands, especially, when you want to ensure coffee quality and consistency. All the team members and collaborators of La Perla Negra contribute greatly to achieving these goals with their efforts and talents.
Our coffee is handpicked only after it is completely red (ripe), and that is how the selection process starts. Soon after the picking, the cherries are thoroughly inspected to eliminate any over fermented, green, or insect infested ones. After the pulping, the coffee beans are floated to discard any underdeveloped or insect damaged beans. Now, the beans are fermented to improve the flavor and aroma of the coffee, and after this they are washed to remove the mucilage - a sticky, sugary substance.
At that stage, the beans are left with a fine hull known as the parchment.
Subsequently, the wet parchment coffee is spread out in raised beds to dry in the sun until the moisture content reaches around 10-10.5%. This process can take as long as 14 - 20 days depending on sunlight conditions. During this period of time, more assessments are made to ensure that only the top quality beans will remain. Then, the dried parchment coffee is bagged and taken to the warehouse where it will remain resting for at least three months.
If you thought these stages of coffee processing laborious, they are a piece of cake compared to what comes next! Once the beans have rested, they are ready for hulling – removing parchment from the coffee beans - and what emerges is a green coffee bean. The last step before the roasting is one final inspection, done by hand, where each bean is examined to eliminate any defect and sorted by size and shape. We give the utmost importance to this process because beans of different densities operate differently in the roaster. By eliminating damaged or defective beans and sorting coffee beans by size, we are able to achieve a much more tailored and uniform cup.
We entrust our selected green coffee beans to Torrefacción Mayor, the specialty coffee roasting company that has a century-long family tradition producing the highest quality coffee in Puerto Rico.
All these efforts are made to offer you a product that not only tastes delicious but also provides powerful health benefits due to its high levels of antioxidants and important nutrients that can be preserved only when the coffee is processed adequately and diligently at all stages from seed to cup.
Name and Logo
Pearls, treasures from the earth’s rivers, seas, and oceans, are truly one-of-a-kind because they are one of the few gemstones to come from a living creature, and it takes a few years until pearls are fully developed. In the European tradition, they symbolize purity among other things. The name La Perla Negra (The Black Pearl) was given to our coffee to emphasize its purity that is achieved through the careful selection of the coffee beans. Also, we wanted to give value to the hard work of all people involved in the coffee elaboration process. We want to offer you a real treasure.
La Perla Negra logo was developed by the acclaimed Puerto Rican artist William Maldonado. It alludes to the name of the coffee by showing a roasted coffee bean between two coffee leaves forming a shell. The Puerto Rican flag indicates the origin of the coffee. Only coffee beans grown in Finca Samara, situated in the picturesque mountains of Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, are used for our product. This is a single origin coffee!
