In 2025 MAKER embarked on a new partnership with Shared Source Exports, who specialise in incredibly high quality and traceable lots from Colombia and Guatemala. 

Shared Source are farmgate purchasers who pay in-full directly to producers or their independent associations, upon delivery of parchment, in local currency. Their goal is to pay coffee prices that are socially impactful beyond just the transaction and the quality in the cup. 

We fell in love with Arlam Aguirre’s 2024 coffee that was blended from separately produced lots of caturra and bourbon. Shared Source paid Q1575 per quintal which was 25% above the market price at the time, in the local currency, which is about as “direct trade” as coffee purchasing can possibly be. 

Our coffee exporting pal Andrew (from Shared Source) first met Arlam in 2016 when he was working as a technician and agronomist for Anacafe which is Guatemala’s national coffee organisation. Attending several of the same trips unknowingly to meet small cooperatives and associations in Huehuetenango, Arlam and Andrew eventually connected and found a very close alignment in organic farming practices and high quality coffee from the Huehue region.

Arlam’s wife, Yoesmi, was the original connection point in this relationship, as the first few lots produced came from Yoesmi’s family farm. These days Yoesmi is not actively involved in coffee production but remains in touch with Arlam’s work and is a keen supporter of their shared success in quality.

As a diligent and focussed quality coffee producer, Arlam is a fairly serious guy with dreams of transitioning his plots of land to fully organic agriculture, but alas, those dreams have evolved into what's known as “production limpio” which translates to “clean production”. This term gives weight to supplementing small amounts of conventional fertilisers with organic products and no herbicides or fungicides used for soil health and fertility reasons. 

Additionally he filters his “agua miels” (polluted water from washing coffee) so that his total water consumption at the farm is less than the average local producer, meaning he can re use an amount of filtered water in future, helping to keep costs down and one foot in the door of further sustainability measures. 

Shared Source last visited Arlam in March 2023 after he had just installed new tanks and new channels to wash and sort cherry more thoroughly by density, not too dissimilar to the equipment practices used in Ethiopia.

The standard practice at the Aguirre processing station is to submerge all cherry fermentations, which is a practice most commonly found in Colombia these days. In wider Huehuetenango some hybrid form of fermentation is used where producers will partly submerge under water with water changed daily. We think a big part of the reason Arlam’s found such success in a crowded Guatemala coffee producing region is because of this attention to detail, looking further abroad for inspiration on different processing practices and investing in finding and sticking to methods that work best for quality reasons.

The locality of the Aguirre plots are in a township called "Agua Dulce” which is right on the Mexican border. The micro climate here is interestingly and weirdly cold and simultaneously humid. It’s a “corridor" as the locals describe it where hot air meets cold air so there’s lots of rain and a dense thick humidity that you can taste all year round. 

Arlam says his cherry more often than not will ‘Brix’ range between 19-25, which is the measurement of sugar content inside the ripe fruit, when it is ready to be picked from the tree. For reference, this is a high measurement of sugar content as far as Guatemala coffee production goes. 

We couldn't be more excited to share this gorgeous micro lot from Arlam Aguirre with you at Maker. You can find Arlam’s coffee available at all Maker locations and on our website, shipped straight to your door.