Although Panama is not the country with the longest coffee-growing history, it occupies a pivotal position in the specialty coffee world. From coffee's first arrival in 1742 to the emergence of renowned estates such as Hacienda La Esmeralda and Hartmann Estate today, Panama has taken a high-end route of low volume but high quality. This article will outline the development of Panamanian coffee and its three core producing regions, explain the origins and evolution of the Best of Panama green bean competition, and share Front Street Coffee's flavor understanding and pour-over brewing method for washed Boquete Geisha.

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On Front Street's bean list, Panama occupies the most prominent spot on the blackboard, including multiple single-origin coffees with prices ranging from a few dozen yuan to several hundred yuan, which makes many first-time visitors curious and prompts them to ask the baristas about the unique characteristics of each bean. To respond to these friends' questions, Front Street today leads everyone into this internationally renowned coffee origin, while also discussing the coffee history of that distant hemisphere.

The History of Panamanian Coffee

Among the countries of Central America, Panama did not start growing coffee particularly early, yet its reputation is especially loud, and almost no one in the specialty coffee world is unfamiliar with it. Today, coffee has long been integrated into Panamanians' daily diet, and whether in street-side eateries or high-end restaurants, what is served is coffee produced domestically.

According to written records, coffee was first introduced to Panama in 1742. At that time, a ship departing from Martinique in the French Caribbean arrived at Portobelo via Cartagena (which does not produce coffee), and a barrel of coffee beans was registered on the cargo list. However, the first record of coffee cultivation in Panama itself did not appear until 1780. Settler Pedro Antonio de Ayarza attempted to grow coffee in Portobelo between 1780 and the 1790s, but he soon discovered that local conditions were not suitable for coffee growing.

It was not until the 1820s that coffee cultivation gradually spread to other areas of Panama, and it successfully replaced chocolate as the main beverage, competing with tea, which had established itself in Europe.

Geographically, Panama is located in Central America, with Costa Rica and Colombia on its left and right sides respectively, both of which are high-quality coffee-producing countries, so Panama's coffee path can be said to be inherently advantaged. After checking the map, Front Street found that Panama is sandwiched between two ocean currents, and the air currents of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean converge in the area of the Boquete Valley above 6,500 feet in elevation, nurturing a unique and variable microclimate. Not only are the temperature and humidity just right, but with the added support of volcanic soil, coffee cherries growing here are more likely to develop layered and rich aromas.

As is well known, the Panama Canal was built by the United States, and after completion it was once managed solely by the United States for a period. It was precisely the excavation of the canal that brought a large number of American elites southward at the end of the 20th century, both for work needs and for consideration of business opportunities. Many famous coffee estates in Panama were born at the hands of these elites; for example, the owner of Hacienda La Esmeralda was originally a banker, and the owner of Hartmann Estate came from an engineering background. When operating coffee estates, these people adhered to the concepts of standardization and refinement. Whether it was dividing plots according to altitude to determine coffee bean grades, or manual picking and refined processing, these links were all important factors in bringing Panamanian coffee onto the world stage.

Panamanian Coffee Producing Regions

Panama's coffee planting area is about more than 20,000 hectares, of which nearly 16,000-plus hectares are planted with Arabica varieties. The country's main coffee-producing areas are concentrated in Chiriquí Province in the west near the border with Costa Rica, where there are three well-known growing areas: Boquete, Volcán, and Renacimiento. These three places are adjacent to one another, all located on the Central American ridge and close to the majestic but not very active Barú Volcano, whose highest peak is 3,475 meters above sea level. Thanks to the diverse climate and fertile volcanic soil, Chiriquí Province has also become an area with enormous agricultural and pastoral potential. Various agricultural and livestock activities such as thoroughbred horse breeding and flower cultivation are developed here, and coffee, cherry, and banana plantations are especially important. Below, Front Street introduces these three main producing areas one by one.

The cool and scenic Boquete Valley can be called the birthplace of Panama's coffee industry. At the end of the 19th century, a large number of European immigrants came here, mainly Swiss, Yugoslavs, Swedes, and Germans. They discovered that coffee cultivation in nearby areas (Panama belonged to Colombia before 1903) was outstanding, so they decided to devote themselves to coffee bean production. At present, the Boquete area has about 50 to 75 coffee farms and about 15 coffee processing plants.

Boquete has a land area of 514 square kilometers and is home to more than 15,000 residents. It mainly grows coffee, flowers, citrus fruits, strawberries, and various vegetables. Most coffee plantations in this area are located at around 1,600 meters above sea level. In fact, these lands are all composed of nutrient-rich volcanic soil, providing ample nutrition for coffee trees. The climate is cool and rather dry, and every day, especially in summer, an imperceptible thin mist formed by drizzle shrouds the coffee plantations. This wind mixed with rain is precisely the reason why Boquete coffee cherries mature slowly, and the coffee produced thereby has medium to high levels of acidity.

Because Chiriquí Province is dominated by coffee cultivation, coffee culture is deeply rooted in people's hearts. According to statistics from Panama's Ministry of Agricultural Development, the country has more than 8,000 coffee growers, and almost every one of them has a farm area of less than 30 hectares. Panama's coffee harvest period is from September to December. During this time, indigenous groups known as the Gnobe Bugle, usually called Guaymíes by locals, can be seen everywhere in the coffee plantations. They come to help pick coffee cherries during the harvest season. Because their picking techniques and professional knowledge are relatively outstanding, their labor costs are also higher than others. In addition, the Guaymíes indigenous people still preserve traditional culture, making and wearing necklaces and clothing made of colorful beads, and the baskets they use for picking are also distinctive, forming a beautiful scene when standing in the coffee groves.

Before 1989, Panama's coffee prices had always been controlled by the International Coffee Agreement, and for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Panama also continuously exported green coffee beans on a small scale to Western European countries. However, in that year, the agreement collapsed, and international green bean prices suffered a plunging crisis, with coffee bean prices falling from $1.2 per pound to as low as $0.74.

In the early 1990s, as commercial coffee bean prices declined, Panama began to turn its attention to the emerging specialty coffee market. In 1996, seven local coffee estate owners in Panama jointly founded the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama (SCAP). They were Ricardo Koyner, Price Peterson, Jaime Tedman, Marcos Moreno, Tony Vasquez, Hans Collins, Josue Ruiz, Wilford Lamastus, Francisco Serricin, and Ratibor Hartmann, and they held the first coffee green bean competition as well as an online green coffee auction, with the aim of organizing small coffee growers across the country to jointly promote high-quality Panamanian coffee.

Best of Panama BOP

This is the earliest-established green coffee competition in the world, and it can also be called a "coffee bean auction"—Best of Panama. Estate owners submit high-quality coffee lots produced locally for competition, and the lots with the best quality and highest scores are selected; then, according to the evaluation scores, global buyers bid, and the highest bidder wins. In recent years, the bidding price for BOP champion beans has reached as high as thousands of dollars, making it a focal event in the coffee industry.

Unlike major producing countries such as Brazil and Vietnam, Panama has taken the route of low-volume and high-end specialty coffee. In the 1990s, facing a low point in Panama's coffee industry and a global green bean price crisis that made it difficult for coffee people to keep operating, the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama, SCAP, organized local farm owners to unite and held the first Best of Panama green coffee competition in 1996, selling specialty coffee beans through bidding. This also greatly changed Panama's coffee industry while influencing the direction of the world specialty coffee market.

Because in the competition Geisha scores much higher than other varieties, the submitted green coffee beans are currently divided into Geisha and non-Geisha groups, then further divided by processing method into natural and washed groups, and then each judge scores them blindly. In the end, the coffee beans with the highest average score are that year's Best of Panama. In 2022, a Geisha from Guarumo Estate won first place in the natural Geisha group with an exceptionally high average score of 95.96, while the washed group champion was taken by a Geisha from Aurora Estate with an average score as high as 96.15.

The Flavor Characteristics of Panamanian Geisha

Front Street Coffee believes that, as the place where Geisha became famous, Panama's Geisha coffee produced with mature cultivation techniques and processing methods is still a guarantee of industry reputation. Therefore, Front Street has launched a Geisha coffee from the Boquete producing area, using washed processing, hoping to let everyone taste the classic Geisha flavor.

In washed processing, the selected coffee cherries are first put into a depulper to initially remove their skin and pulp; the green coffee beans with residual pulp and mucilage are placed in water to ferment for about 24 hours; after fermentation, the green coffee beans with parchment are washed in a flowing water channel to remove the pulp and mucilage; after washing, the coffee beans are dried in the sun or with a dryer to reduce their moisture content to about 12%. Finally, the parchment of the green coffee beans is removed.

As one of the most traditional green bean processing methods, washed processing not only makes coffee production quality more stable, but also allows Geisha to present a flavor profile with higher cleanliness and a fresher taste. After roasting, Front Street sensed Geisha's elegant white floral fragrance, rising citrus and lemon acidity, with a slight green tea charm, like drinking a cup of gentle Tieguanyin tea. How should such a rich-tasting Geisha coffee be brewed so as not to waste it?

Geisha coffee's flavor is famous worldwide for its rich floral aroma and complex fruit profile. Front Street's roaster hopes to retain more of Geisha's high-quality acidity, so chooses a medium-light roast (with slight adjustments made for different lots). This roast level does not change much of the high hardness of high-altitude beans, so brewing requires increasing the extraction rate somewhat in order to present a fuller flavor layering, making it suitable to pair with fine grinding and high-temperature hot water.

In order to improve the extraction rate of Geisha coffee, avoid over-extraction, and at the same time highlight the sweet-and-sour flavor layers, the baristas at Front Street Coffee use a V60 dripper. The body of the V60 dripper has guide ribs connecting the top and bottom and a large central circular hole that speeds up the flow of water, while the spiral-shaped exhaust groove design lengthens the water flow path and increases the contact time between coffee grounds and hot water. Each stream of water converges along the grooves toward the center point of the dripper, the pressure on the coffee grounds is concentrated, and the extracted coffee has richer layering.

Below, Front Street demonstrates the brewing steps for the in-store offering Esmeralda Red Label Natural Geisha, which everyone can use for reference and compare with their own brewing approach.

The pour-over parameters for Red Label Geisha coffee are:

Dripper: V60

Water temperature: 91-92°C

Coffee dose: 15g

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15

Grind size: fine granulated sugar size (sieve to 80% with a No. 20 sieve)

Three-stage extraction: First pour 15 grams of coffee grounds into the dripper and tare the scale. In the first stage, pour 30g of water for blooming for 30 seconds, and start timing at the same time, using a small stream of water at the center point throughout, beginning to spiral outward, taking care to wet the entire coffee bed. In the second stage, begin pouring 120g of water with a slightly larger stream, with the aim of raising the entire coffee bed. The stream should be poured vertically and evenly. At this point the timer scale shows 150g, and pouring is completed in about 55 seconds.

When the liquid level drops to the halfway point, begin using a small stream to pour the third stage of 90 grams in a small spiral, trying to control the stream so it does not spiral too widely, as it is easy to disturb the coffee bed and cause under-extraction. The final total poured water is 240 grams, and the drip completion time is about 2 minutes 10 seconds. After removing the dripper, swirl the coffee liquid in the server evenly and it is ready to taste.

The pour-over Panamanian washed Boquete Geisha coffee has a clear acidity of citrus, lemon, and bergamot, with a creamy smooth mouthfeel when swallowed, and a finish of the sweet aftertaste of green tea and honey.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.