Coffee has always been an important part of Puerto Rico as well as a love of mine. The coffee grown here is special. It is low altitude grown (compared to the high mountains of Colombia) so it is a strong flavored bean which makes other milder sweeter varieties seem weak in comparison.

There are many special coffee shops here. We are going to visit as many as possible in the San Juan area for this series of blogs and podcasts. Some of the really special ones don’t have parking nearby but are still always crowded with customers like Café Comunión in Santurce or Café Dosis which is also in Santurce but has some parking on the street in front. The skill of the baristas at these Puerto Rican coffee shops is unparalleled.

In the interest of serving the most delicious cup of coffee as possible many of these shops import high quality beans from Ethiopia or the high mountains of Guatemala. We have chosen to only feature those coffee shops who use locally grown beans (most from the same high mountain areas). If you click on the google map image below it will load a map we’ve made which shows all the growers in Puerto Rico with a subset of growers who offer coffee tours. We also show many coffee shops in Puerto Rico. As I write this I’m enjoying a cup of coffee at Agape Kafé — the owner Shaly Morales served me a delicious cappuccino made from a coffee roasted nearby at cafe Serrano. No way is our map of Puerto Rican coffee shops inclusive of all the shops available on the island even limiting it to only shops that serve locally grown beans exclusively.

The coffee shops are excellent and innovative. Café La Estacion is in a Shell gas station and serves Gustos’s delicious “chupacabra” blend. RxCafe is in one corner of the Super Farmacia — go there and often the owner Alberto Vanga is there serving delicious cappuccinos made with fresh-roasted Don Pello from Cialles. We are going to interview some of the coffee shop owners, growers, and coffee producers both for the Rainforest Inn podcast but also for further blog posts that will be in depth features. For example the next blog post will be about “Coffee Monkey”, a shop we discovered in Fajardo — not too far from the Rainforest Inn.