Papua New Guinea – Carpenter Estates – Sigri – Natural Processed

Description

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

All coffee bearing the Carpenter Estate name is grown at over 5000 feet elevation. All of their Estates considers soil and water conservation as a 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.

These are washed processed Arabica coffees. 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.

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 herbal like quality. Can tell this is a very slow dry natural. A longer setup rid the cup of more astringent features, takes almost 5-12 days of resting for these funky naturals to mellow. 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, darker roasts were our favorite with its crazy depth of flavors, strong semi-sweet chocolate tones balancing with a barrel aged red fruit.

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.

The quick story of Papua New Guinea Sigri/Bunum-Wo/Kindeng: one can clear up a lot of information when you get on the ground somewhere. What I and many others thought was a farm “Sigri Estate” is really just a section of the larger Carpenter Estates – Sigri being only one of the areas of the estate (easily the most famous). The other two are Bunum Wo and Kindeng. Each of the three produces a stellar cup with slightly different tastes; PNG being full of microclimates really puts a different spin on each section. Each one is like its own village situated right next to each other, with separate wet mills, drying fields, nurseries, living quarters, and schools, for each of the three sections. They do share a couple facilities (dry mill, bagging, trucking to port) and many staff.

Each of the three sections of Carpenter Estates has separate fields for different strains and top-notch agronomists to grow the best beans. Most of these folks have coffee in their blood. Being a part of the coffee here is a birthright for them (seen as a cradle to the grave philosophy). Great pride all around.

Read More:
Papua New Guinea “The Wild West Of Coffee Production”
Papua New Guinea Carpenter Estates Coffee

These Carpenter Estate coffees are gems – nothing like your traditional PNG coffees. Almost a 0 defect screen with immaculate processing. You can just look at the beans and see the care and time that went into them.

A fermentation process follows, for a period of three days broken every 24 hours by washing – but unlike most other brands, the Carpenter 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 bean for which Carpenter 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.

Quality Control At Carpenter Estates:

Non-edited Wet Mill Running At Carpenter Estates:

Elementary School At Sigri Estate: