Panama Premium Boquete – Damarli Estate – Noble Caturra “Redwood”

Description

This is a very jazzy cup of coffee with a pretty strong natural processed spin. Lighter roasting points (before 2nd crack) are where this cup will shine. Light roasts will be sizzling bright with intense citrus floral and fruit tones. The fruitiness is almost winy and more reminiscent of red grape skin, complex with a bit of astringency up front. The cup will be pretty front-loaded at the light roast points but will have a little contrast with a unique spice note and malty tones.

I have really come to love Damarli’s Redwood processing, and in talking with Keith, this was also his favorite lot of the season. Noble Redwood processing is an “anaerobic” tanked & aged natural, with added yeast to control the process and tweak it with new tastes and flavors.

This Caturra Natural is genuinely wild and is on the stronger side: excellent prep and one heck of a cup. It’s pretty exotic stuff; if you are new to Natural Processed coffees, be in for something different. Even for you natural processed fans, this cup has some unique features. Being highly rated, this cup will have some blasty acidity to it. Citrus, floral, spice, fruit, and malt are a few ways of describing this cup.

Tasting Notes: A very jazzy cup of coffee with a strong natural processed spin. Lighter roasting points (before 2nd crack) are where this cup will shine. Light roasts will be sizzling bright with intense citrus floral and fruit tones. The fruitiness is almost winy and more reminiscent of red grape skin, complex with a bit of astringency up front. The cup will be pretty front-loaded at the light roast points but will have a little contrast with a unique spice note and malty tones.

Medium roasts bring much more traditional darker tones to the cup and are where anyone who doesn’t like too much acidity should start; they are still a bit lemony upfront but fade quickly into soft fruit tones and more potent spicy malty/chocolaty notes. This is where the unique spice notes develop in the flavor profile; anise, pepper, and clove were some common descriptors the tasters threw.

Dark roasting is pretty wild, very fully flavored, and strong. It still has a hint of sweet fruit, but it is a stretch; a chocolate/malt undertone and strong spice will dominate the taste. Smooth and creamy, not too roasty, but unlike much else we have seen. Some will love this roast point, others will not.

Roasting Notes: It depends on personal taste what to do with this coffee, and it can be a bit harder to roast. It has high chaff and will roast a little unevenly; reducing the batch size slightly is good. It looks way darker roasted than it is; even at the first crack, beans will look like they are pushing 2nd crack. If you see splotches of color on a single bean, you are still in the light to medium ballpark. An intense sheen to the beans means you are getting closer to 2nd crack than the first.

It can go very quickly from the first to the second crack, and it is sometimes good to time it on the first roast. If shooting for a light roast, you will have to cool the roast before the last “1st crack”. Do not worry; assuming 90%+ of the beans are through first crack, it will taste clean.

The front-loaded light roast cup is pretty cool if you like acidity, floral, and fruit tones. If you like traditional Panama and Central American coffee, good to go into the medium roast points to get some darker-toned balance.

Damarli Estate
Producing award-winning Panamanian coffee since the late 90s! Located in Boquete, Panama, at an elevation between 4,700 and 4,900 feet near the Baru Volcano, the dry microclimates produced here are excellent for coffee growing.

The estate dates back to 1995 when David Pech, a photographer in the United States, and his wife Lia Pech (Ruiz) bought the farm from a bank foreclosure. Lia’s family, the Ruiz family, had been heavily involved in the coffee industry in Boquete for four generations; thus, David and Lia were encouraged to get involved with the family industry as well.

Damarli, as a name, came from a combination of the original investors: David and Lia and David’s father and mother (Manfred and Ruth Pech) – DA- for David, MA- for Manfred, R – for Ruth and LI – for Lia.

Coffee plants were planted in 1996 and began to produce beans in 2001. For over a decade, Damarli Estate sold the raw coffee cherries to Casa Ruiz, which was Lia’s family’s coffee business. In 2014, David and Lia’s son Keith moved from the United States to Panama to begin a new project at Damarli Estate. This was the beginning of a new chapter for the beans.

Keith began to identify all the unique coffee varieties grown at Damarli Estate and market them internationally. Keith and David then began to process their own coffee at the estate to create sweet and unique cup profiles with little to no water waste. Keith and his family use cutting-edge, sustainable processing to deliver premium, environmentally friendly coffee consistently.

They built a house on the estate to accept visitors. Keith and David also made a new mill and drying beds to process all the coffee and a coffee-tasting lab to receive international buyers.

Damarli Estate is a beautiful farm filled with tropical birds, tall canopy forests, and enchanting sunrises. During the rainy season, the morning landscape is transformed into a villa in the clouds as mountain clouds lower into the valleys of the Baru volcano.