Papua New Guinea – Carpenter Estates – Sigri Estate – Natural Processed

Description

New crop arrival from our friends at Carpenter Estates!

Sigri Natural is a crazy unique lot! Their first natural processed export. Very wild fermenty stuff; very sweet, citric, floral, fruity, boozy, oaky, nutty, chocolaty with a bit of acidity behind it. Reminds me of the Bali Kintamani Natural, or Colombian Manos Natural with a different spin.

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Tasting Notes: Good from light to dark, very different tasting dependent on roast level. If you are a very fruit forward natural fan, sticking in the light to medium roast level is recommended. Contrary to many naturals, these beans rock at the fuller roast levels as well, touching or into second crack produces a very lively cup, not super roasty with incredible depth of flavor and good balance between light and dark tones.

Light roast themselves, are pretty citric, sweet and floral with almost a red wine vinegar like quality. Can tell this is a very slow dry natural. A longer setup rid the cup of more astringent features, takes almost 5-7 days of resting at light roasts. Medium roasts get much more chocolaty with fruity overlays, very tasty. No missing the fruitiness assuming you are pre-second crack. Medium bodied with just a pinch of citric/floral crispness. Although we liked all the roast points, dark roasts held a special place, strong semi-sweet chocolate tones balancing with red fruit. Gets that chocolate/cherry like profile that is more rare for fruity naturals at dark roasts.

Roasting Notes: A good screen for a fruity natural, but also keep in mind, not quite the gem of their washed processed. More extreme naturals like this are uneven roasting and high chaff with variance in colors and size. We recommend erroring darker than lighter. With the two toned roasting, if you nail the roast too light, it will show some grassy/veg cup qualities if too many beans are before 1st crack.

These Sigri Estate coffees are generally gems but this experimental natural lot will be a different animal; very different from the AA or PB washed processed. High chaff, uneven roasting with very wild tones and higher acidity. This offering brings the wild nature of PNG back to the beans.

As with all of our relationships coffees, not only are they changing the coffee game for themselves, but also the whole area and region they are in. They are raising wages and education (and produce quality) for every farmer around them.

All coffee bearing the Sigri name is grown at over 5000 feet elevation. Sigri considers soil and water conservation a top priority, and the plantation is bird and eco-friendly. The plantation employs a medium density shade strategy, using two types of shade trees. This promotes even ripening of coffee cherries and provides habitat for at least 90 species of birds.

Sigri is a washed Arabica coffee and undergoes a rigorous wet factory process. Quality control begins in the field; cherry coffee is hand-picked and carefully checked for uniformity; it must be red and fully ripe which allows for the correct balance of sugar and acid within the cherry. This selected cherry is then pulped on the day of picking.

A fermentation process follows, a period of three days broken every 24 hours by washing – but unlike most other brands, the Sigri process follows this by total immersion in water for a further day, which creates a superior coffee. Careful conditioning of 21 days is followed by hulling, grading, color sorting and finally hand sorting. This combined with rigorous quality control before packing produces the finest green been for which Sigri is renowned.

All grades are then continuously sample-roasted and liquored by experts. This provides a final check on the quality of the green bean product, and is a practice unique in Papua New Guinea.

To learn more about Carpenter Estates coffees, see our recent blog article.