Costa Rica - Alejo Castro

About the Coffee

The Castro family has been farming in the highlands of Costa Rica since the early 19th century. Their operation, Volcan Azul, sits on fertile volcanic soils at high elevation, where they've spent years developing unique coffee varieties and refining their processing methods. The San Isidro variety grown here was bred specifically for these conditions: it ripens evenly, resists disease, and produces consistent yields, which makes it well-suited to natural processing.

In natural processing, whole coffee cherries are dried with the fruit still on, which takes longer and requires careful attention to avoid defects. Alejo Castro approaches this deliberately. As he puts it, the goal isn't novelty for its own sake: "The successful experiment is the one that you can repeat." The San Isidro variety's uniform cherry size helps here, since even ripening means the fruit dries at a consistent rate across the lot.

This coffee has a bit of history at Spilt Milk. It was the first coffee their head roaster, Lemmie, ever roasted, which is part of why they've committed to keeping a Volcan Azul coffee on the menu year-round. They roast it light and recommend it for filter brewing, suggesting a 16:1 ratio (20g coffee to 320ml water) with a medium-coarse grind, and resting it at least three to four weeks from the roast date before brewing.

About Spilt Milk

Spilt Milk started as a café in Revelstoke, BC, built around Australian café culture and the idea that good coffee should be straightforward and everyday, not intimidating. After years in hospitality, the team decided to start roasting their own coffee, giving them more control over quality and consistency across both their café and what they sell to brew at home.

Their coffee lineup splits into two directions: an Everyday range designed to be reliable and easy to brew at home, and a Premium range for more expressive, seasonal lots like this one from Volcan Azul. The San Isidro falls into that second category, and it's the kind of coffee they clearly plan to keep coming back to.