Although Panama is a small country, it occupies a pivotal position on the specialty coffee map. On Front Street Coffee's bean list, Panamanian coffees range from a few dozen yuan to several hundred yuan, and this wide price span often makes newcomers curious. This article will take you through the origins of coffee cultivation in Panama, the geography and climate characteristics of its three core production regions—Boquete, Volcán, and Renacimiento—analyze how the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama and the Best of Panama green bean competition propelled Geisha onto the world stage, and use a washed Boquete Geisha as an example to break down in detail a complete pour-over recipe from V60 dripper selection to three-stage pouring.

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On Front Street's bean list, Panama has long occupied a prominent spot on the blackboard, covering several single-origin coffees, some of which can be bought for just a few dozen yuan, while others are priced at several hundred yuan. This stark price difference has caught the attention of many first-time customers, who ask the baristas one after another what makes each bean unique. To address such questions, Front Street today takes everyone into this world-famous coffee-producing country and, along the way, shares coffee stories from the other side of the globe.

The History of Panamanian Coffee

Compared with other Central American countries, Panama's coffee cultivation history is not particularly long, yet its fame is astonishing, and in the specialty coffee world it is known to all. Today, coffee has become part of Panamanians' daily diet, from roadside inns to high-end restaurants, all serving coffee produced locally in Panama.

According to documentary records, coffee beans first arrived in Panama in 1742. At that time, a ship set out from Martinique in the French Caribbean, passed through Cartagena—which produced no coffee—and arrived at Portobelo, with a barrel of coffee beans recorded on its cargo manifest. However, the first recorded coffee planting within Panama was in 1780. Settler Pedro Antonio de Ayala y Zárate attempted to grow coffee in Portobelo during the 1780s to 1790s, but he soon discovered that the place was not suitable for coffee cultivation.

It was not until the 1820s that coffee spread to other regions of Panama and successfully replaced chocolate as the main beverage, competing with tea, which had taken root in Europe.

Geographically, Panama is located in Central America, bordering two high-quality coffee-producing countries, Costa Rica and Colombia, on its left and right sides respectively, so its coffee industry path can be said to have been born with a silver spoon. After checking the map, Front Street noted that Panama is sandwiched between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, and air currents converge in the Boquete Valley above 6,500 feet in elevation, shaping a unique and changeable microclimate. Such conditions not only keep temperature and humidity within a suitable range, but together with the effect of volcanic soil, also make coffee fruits grown here more likely to develop layered and rich aromas.

As is well known, the Panama Canal was built by the United States, and after its completion it was independently controlled by the United States for a period. It was precisely the digging of the canal that brought many American elites southward in the late 20th century, partly out of work needs and partly to seek business opportunities. Many well-known coffee estates in Panama came from the hands of these elites; for example, the owner of Hacienda La Esmeralda originally worked in banking, and the owner of Hartmann Estate was previously an engineer. These elites adhered to the principles of standardization and refinement when managing coffee estates. Whether it was grading coffee beans by dividing plots according to altitude or manually picking and meticulously processing, these were all key factors in making Panamanian coffee internationally renowned.

Panamanian Coffee Production 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 coffee cultivation is mainly concentrated in Chiriquí Province in the west near the border with Costa Rica, which includes three well-known production regions: Boquete, Volcán, and Renacimiento. These three places are adjacent to one another, all located on the Central American ridge, close to the majestic but not frequently active Barú Volcano, with a maximum elevation of 3,475 meters. Thanks to the diverse climate and fertile volcanic soil, Chiriquí Province also has enormous potential for agriculture and livestock production. Various agricultural and livestock activities thrive here, such as thoroughbred breeding, flower cultivation, and especially coffee, cherry, and banana plantations. Front Street will continue below by introducing these three main production regions.

The cool and picturesque 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 found that the nearby region (Panama belonged to Colombia before 1903) was outstanding for coffee cultivation, so they decided to devote themselves to coffee bean production. At present, there are about 50 to 75 coffee farms and about 15 coffee processing plants in the Boquete area.

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

Because Chiriquí Province is dominated by coffee cultivation, coffee culture has long been deeply rooted in people's hearts. According to data 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 period, indigenous groups known as the Gnobe Bugle, usually called Guaymí by locals, can be seen everywhere in the coffee gardens. They come during the harvest season to help pick coffee beans. Because of their stronger picking techniques and professional knowledge, their labor costs are also higher than others. In addition, the Guaymí indigenous people still preserve traditional culture, making and wearing necklaces and clothing strung with colorful beads, and the baskets they use for picking are also distinctive, forming a beautiful scenic line when standing in the coffee groves.

Before 1989, Panama's coffee prices had long been controlled by the International Coffee Agreement, and for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Panama also 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 US dollars per pound to as low as 0.74 US dollars.

In the early 1990s, as commercial coffee bean prices declined, Panama turned 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. They were Ricardo Koyner, Price Peterson, Jaime Tedman, Marcos Moreno, Tony Vasquez, Hans Collins, Josue Ruiz, Wilford Lamastus, Francisco Serricin, and Ratibor Hartmann. At the same time, they also held the first green bean competition and online green bean 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 world's earliest established green coffee competition, and it can also be called a coffee bean "auction"—Best of Panama. Estate owners submit high-quality coffee lots produced locally for evaluation, and the lots with the best quality and highest scores are selected. Then, based on the evaluation scores, buyers from around the world bid, and the highest bidder wins. In recent years, the bidding price for BOP champion beans has reached as high as over a thousand US dollars, becoming a focal event in the coffee industry.

Unlike major producing countries such as Brazil and Vietnam, Panama follows a route of low volume and high-end specialization. In the 1990s, facing the trough of Panama's coffee industry and the global green bean price crisis, coffee practitioners found it difficult to sustain their operations, so the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama 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 greatly changed the structure of Panama's coffee industry and also influenced the direction of the world specialty coffee market.

Because Geisha scores far higher than other varieties in the competition, the green coffee beans submitted are currently divided into Geisha and non-Geisha groups, then further divided by processing method into natural and washed groups, and then blind-tasted and scored by judges. The coffee bean with the highest final average score is that year's Best of Panama. In 2022, Geisha from Guarumo Coffee Farm won first place in the natural Geisha group with an ultra-high average score of 95.96, while the washed group champion was won by Geisha from Aurora Estate with an average score as high as 96.15.

The Flavor Characteristics of Panamanian Geisha

Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) believes that Panama, as the place where Geisha rose to fame, still produces Geisha coffee that is a guarantee of industry reputation thanks to mature cultivation techniques and processing methods. Therefore, Front Street has launched a Geisha coffee from the Boquete production region, using washed processing, hoping to let everyone taste the classic Geisha flavor.

Washed processing first involves putting selected coffee cherries into a pulper to initially remove the skin and pulp; then soaking the green coffee beans with residual pulp and mucilage in water to ferment for about 24 hours; after fermentation is complete, washing the green coffee beans with parchment in a flowing water channel to remove pulp and mucilage; after washing, drying the coffee beans in the sun or with a dryer to reduce the 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 higher cleanliness and a fresher flavor profile. After roasting, Front Street perceived Geisha's elegant white floral aroma, rising citrus and lemon acidity, with a slight green tea note, just like drinking a cup of gentle Tieguanyin tea. How should such a rich Geisha coffee be brewed so as not to waste it?

Geisha coffee's flavor is famous worldwide for its rich floral aroma and complex fruity profile. Front Street's roaster hopes to retain more of Geisha's high-quality acidity, so a medium-light roast is chosen (slight adjustments are made for different batches). This roast level does not greatly change the high hardness of high-altitude beans, so brewing requires a certain increase in extraction rate to present a fuller layering of flavor, 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 while also highlighting the layered sweet-and-sour flavor, Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) baristas choose the V60 dripper. The V60 dripper body has diversion ribs connecting the top and bottom as well as a large circular hole in the center, which can speed up the downward flow of water, while the spiral-shaped vent groove design lengthens the water flow path, increasing the contact time between coffee grounds and hot water. Each stream of water converges along the grooves toward the center point of the dripper, concentrating the pressure on the coffee grounds and extracting coffee with richer layering.

Below, Front Street demonstrates the brewing steps for the store's Emerald Red Label natural Geisha. You can refer to it and compare it with your own brewing approach.

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

Dripper: V60

Water temperature: 91-92°C

Dose: 15g

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15

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

Three-stage extraction: First pour 15 grams of coffee grounds into the dripper and tare the weight. In the first stage, pour 30g of water for a 30-second bloom, and start timing at the same time. Throughout, pour in a small stream at the center point, then begin circling outward, taking care to wet the entire coffee bed. In the second stage, begin pouring 120g of water in a slightly larger stream, with the aim of raising the entire coffee bed. The water column should be poured vertically and evenly. At this point the timing 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 small circles, trying to control the stream so it does not circle too widely, as this can easily 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 to mix it 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.