Description
Boy it has certainly paid off being good buddies with Damarli Estate. Keith Pech, owner of Damarli Estate 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 won the Best of Panama in 2019 for his Imperial Pacamara and will likely have some winners in this years competition at the end of Sept. He really hooked it up with a nice high-end Natural Processed Catuai and Typica for far less money than the competition winners, 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 Typica Natural is nice and exotic but a bit on the milder side compared to the Catuai Natural, nice contrast between the two. 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.
Tasting Notes: A clean, sweet & smooth cup. Best at the lighter roast points but works nicely in the medium roast range as well. Lighter roasts focus the tastes more around the brighter citric/fruit tones: a hint of lemony citric that fades into a fruitiness, balancing with a darker malt like undertone. A good daily drinking lighter roast coffee. Comparatively to the Catuai, the Typica is mild mannered, delicate, less acidic, smoother, but with similar tastes. Medium roasts bring a more traditional cup with better balance. This should be the minimum roast level if you do not want noticeable floral/fruit notes upfront. Still has a bit of jazz upfront but a more pronounced nutty/malty tone to balance it out. The fruitiness turns a bit more normal for a natural, red-fruit like and sweet.
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 on a single beans, you are still in the light to medium ballpark. 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.
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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