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Special Geisha – Hacienda La Esmeralda, Panama

With Coffee Supreme's importing of Hacienda La Esmeralda's Special Geisha green bean, i thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about coffee, what makes a good cup, why people are willing to pay $200/kg for a hot beverage and why coffee aficionados are often misrepresented by those not interested in coffee and called pretentious and wanky. Then i'll move on to discussing the Special Geisha from Hacienda La Esmeralda, Panama.

An introduction to Quality Coffee - Don't call me pretentious, call me enlightened

My initial rebuke to that is that is to ask you to consider that people who appreciate good coffee are just like people who enjoy drinking good whisky - parallels can be drawn between the two, for example: conceptually a coffee made from a single origin bean is comparable to single malt whisky and a coffee blend that your local coffee shop will sell you in an espresso is like blended whisky.

Blending coffee, like blending whisky, allows the roaster to always deliver a consistent product despite fluctuations in green bean supply and quality. It gives the roaster the freedom to work around seasonal effects without compromising the flavour profile of their blend. When you sell single origin beans, like single malt whisky, you are at the mercy of the crop. Some years will be great and some years will be mediocre and you can't hide the flaws by changing the percentages of each origin to compensate.

Blending coffee can be used to produce a full bodied drink with multi-layered tastes throughout a sip, for example, to produce a blend with a nice acidity snap (comparable to the snap that carbonated water gives you on the tongue) with a good body, it may consist of beans sourced from Nicaragua, Colombia, Brazil that have been roasted to full city (roasted to just before the second crack) - which will give a nice body, Central American beans roasted French (dark and oily, taken at the end of the second crack) which will carbonise the sugars in the bean and bring out sweetness. Finally, perhaps some Ethiopian or Kenyan - city roasted (roasted to just after the first crack) for some light flavours and good acidity. Anyway while i'm not by any means a roaster, i hope i've been able to give a bit of an example and given some insight into how blending coffee can be used to give different flavours of coffee.

So back to the single origin coffees, as mentioned i prefer to have a single origin coffee prepared through a non-pressurised brewing method. These kind of beans are treated very carefully throughout the entire production chain, growing in the best conditions, processed carefully, and finally roasted to a profile that suits the batch to bring out the best flavours - through this diligence the end result is quality and flavour that mean that the bean can stand very well on its own merits without needing to be blended. Drinkers of coffee made from beans of a single origin will comment on the flavours that can be tasted in beans from the specific region and plantation it is from - this discussion of the flavours in the bean is often why people who are passionate about coffee may be seen by others to be pretentious. If you've never tasted single origin coffee and you're fortunate enough to live in Wellington (where, correct me if i'm wrong - we have more coffee shops per capita than any other city in the world), take a trip down to one of the many quality coffee shops we have and hit up one of the baristas, most of them are always very passionate and happy to talk to you and help you experience something new. Memphis Belle also run cuppings every couple of weeks in the evenings and will guide you through the cupping process and how the flavours and aromas are identified and assessed.

Hacienda La Esmeralda, Panama -  Special Geisha

So the Special Geisha comes from the geisha (or gesha) varietal of the Arabica coffee plant and is known for growing much taller than other varieties with much more distributed nodes, less foliage and a slightly larger berry:

From Supreme's Blurb:

"Hacienda La Esmeralda is located close to Boquete on the slopes of Mt Baru, in Western Panama. In one small valley, high up on the farm, the La Esmeralda Special grows. It is here that a unique combination of climate, elevation, and varietal come together to create one of the world’s most remarkable and highly sought after coffees."

For all of the samplings i used my handheld ceramic conical burr grinder:

You'll note by the colour that the roast is quite light:

First tried Chemex, then Swiss Gold, also did a cupping

It cups really well, the flavours and aromatics are very easy to distinguish. Very floral aroma as Supreme's description suggests, the caramel and more fruity tastes are the most distinctive. Note: cupping is probably different to what you're thinking, it's a process by which coffee professionals will analyse the flavours, aromas and fragrances in a coffee. It is an essential process used to assess roasting profiles, develop blends and describe the nuances of a coffee.

Both the Chemex and Swiss Gold filter produced more or less the same kind of intensity, which were unfortunately a fair bit less vibrant than what i had tasted when i did the cupping.  Though as the coffee cooled down, the flavours were the most colourful around 55 °C.  Very light body, almost tea-like. i'm not going to describe the flavours and aromas as they are all on Supreme's website.

Swiss Gold Coffee Filter

Me and my friend were discussing that it is very comparable to Nekisse - light, citrus flavours with a nose of strawberries - though we both agreed that the Nekisse had more taste to it, while the Special Geisha was more subtle. It would have been good to try the two side-by-side to make a final judgement on that but Supreme have not had any Nekisse for a while now.  i've not tried the Geisha with a Siphon yet - and i probably won't get a chance to as i'm heading out of Wellington for Christmas tomorrow.

I'd like to give a big thumbs up to Supreme for importing this bean. It's a very expensive bean and at the price they're selling it to the consumer they're not going to turn a profit on it, really they've imported it because they can - and give their customers a chance to experience something that does live up to the category "Rare and Interesting".

Reflected in a cup of Special Geisha