Description
This is season four of working with Keith Pech, owner of Damarli Estate. He has some family in the U.P. (Michigan) and passes by our warehouse from time to time visiting his family. Keith is really on the cutting edge of Panamanian coffee. He really hooked us up this season with his best chops but much smaller quantities than normal. Luckily he was able to produce two winning lots from his neighbor as well to fill in the shortfalls. These are high scoring, super fresh and very tasty lots. His mom is actually part of the Ruiz family who we sourced a ton of awesome Panama coffees from in years past.
This Catuai Natural is more wild and is on the stronger side. Awesome prep and one heck of a cup. Pretty exotic stuff, if you are new to Natural Processed coffees, be in for something different. Being highly rated this cup will have some acidity to it. Floral, winy and fruity mark this cup.
Tasting Notes: A jazzy higher acidity cup of coffee with a noticeable natural processed spin; full of citric, floral and fruity tones. Although similar to the Typica, this Catuai is a much more potent cup, stronger acidity and more complex darker tones (think African type cup). Light roasts themselves will be bright and crisp with strong lemony floral and fruit tones. The fruitiness is almost winy and more reminiscent of a red grape-skin; complex with a little astringency upfront. The cup will be front-loaded (almost all citric/floral/fruity tastes) at the light roast points but will have a little complex herbal chocolaty balance. Medium roasts bring a more traditional cup with better balance. This should be the minimum roast level if you do not want blasty floral/fruit notes upfront. Still a bit lemony upfront but has a much more noticeable malt like tone with a bit of spice to balance it out. The fruitiness turns a bit more normal for a natural, red-fruit like and sweet.
Dark roasting still has well above normal jazz to the cup, hard to roast the floral/fruity notes out of the cup, fuller bodied malt and spice comingle with a little roasty and floral, a little hint of fruit as the cup cools.
Roasting Notes: A bit dependent on personal taste what to do with this coffee and can be a bit harder to roast. High chaff, good to reduce the batch size slightly. Looks way darker roasted than it is, even at first crack, looks like you are pushing 2nd crack. If you are seeing splotches of color on a single bean, you are still in the light to medium ballpark. A strong shine to the beans are you are getting closer to 2nd crack than first. If you like acidity, floral and fruit tones, the front loaded light roast cup is pretty cool stuff. If you like traditional Panama and Central American coffee, good to go into the medium roast points to get some darker toned balance. Darker roasts will be exotic for the roast point, but we liked it best before 2nd crack. A longer setup time on these beans will help a ton, blasty coffees often need 3-5 days to start tasting their best.
Damarli Estate is a specialty coffee farm located in Boquete, Panama. 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.
The estate was planted in 1996 and began to produce in 2001. For over one 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 in order 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 that were grown at Damarli Estate and market them internationally. Keith and David began to process their own coffee at the estate in a way that would create sweet and unique cup profiles that had little to no water waste. They built a house on the estate to accept visitors, a new mill and drying beds to process all the coffees and a coffee tasting lab to accept international buyers. Damarli Estate is a beautiful farm filled with tropical birds, tall canopy forests and enchanting sunrises.
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