A natural process Geisha from Finca La Pacaya, high in the mountains of El Salvador. About as special as coffee gets.
Roasted light for filter and built for pour over, batch brew, Aeropress or the plunger. If you drink your coffee black and you chase the good stuff, this is the one to grab.
In the cup you get delicate jasmine on the nose, ripe stone fruit and sweet berries to follow. Soft, clean and floral with a syrupy sweetness that hangs around. It is gentle, not loud.
Drink it black. A Geisha this delicate gets lost in milk and you would be paying for nuance you cannot taste.
Against the rest of our shelf this sits right at the top. We have 12 bags of it. Once it is gone it is gone, and a lot like this does not come around often.
Finca La Pacaya belongs to Miguel Angel Villavicencio, known as Mav, in the Apaneca Ilamatepec range between 1,750 and 2,000 metres. The farm started with a Geisha obsession. Back in 2013 the family tasted Panama Geisha for the first time and were on a plane to Boquete before the cup had cooled. They tracked down seeds from Francisco Serracin Jr, whose father first brought the variety to Panama, then found an old pacaya farm up in the hills to plant it. That old farm is where the name comes from. Lush primary forest, foggy evenings and rich volcanic soil.
Only the ripest cherries make the cut. Beans are selected at 25 on the Brix scale for sugar, sized through sieves and floated in water before drying. The naturals dry slowly on raised African beds under partial shade, checked through the day with infrared thermometers, down to 10.5 percent moisture. MAV works with 120 pickers, 70 percent of them women and heads of their households.
Best suited for: V60 and pour over, batch brew and filter machines, Aeropress, French press. Black only.
Brew guide to start with: 15g of coffee to 250g of water at 93C, about three minutes total. Adjust the grind until it tastes sweet.
Roast level: light filter roast.
Local Ballarat delivery on Thursdays for orders placed before midnight Tuesday. Shipped daily Australia wide.
