If Napa California is about wine, then Boquete Panama is about coffee. For people living in Boquete Panama before the influx of expatriates, the economy was coffee. It was when the price of coffee collapsed that local farmers sold their farms to developers and expats who had fantasies of growing and selling boutique coffee.
I have a small, postage stamp sized farm, far smaller than required for economic viability. Boquete coffee from either Jaramillo or the slopes of Volcan Baru is about the best in the world. I have written about growing, picking and drying in the past. Today, with the help of my friend Richard of Finca Dos Jefes, I am going to share my initiation to roasting coffee.
Finca Dos Jefes, located in El Salto on the foothills of Volcan Baru, produces an excellent crop of organically grown coffee. I showed up with a bag of beans of my own for Ricard to roast. One look at the beans and he explained they were not ready to roast. They were separated from the cherry, cleaned and dried but they still had the thin parchment layer around the beans. Perfect for aging, green coffee should be aged several months before roasting, but requires parchment removal.
Pretty with the parchment on in the photo above. Ready to roast without parchment in the photo below.
Richard is hand sorting the beans prior to roasting to remove any imperfect beans, stones or other debris. The roaster at Dos Jefes can roast about two kilos of coffee in approximately twenty minutes. You should always request freshly roasted coffee if you really want the flavor.
Richard, clip board in hand is about to release the beans from the hopper into the preheated rotating drum. The drum is at 420F before the beans are added. The temperature rapidly falls as the cool beans are introduced. It fell to 203F and then started to rise again. As the temperature increases, Richard checks the beans for color and aroma at various stages.
At 363F the beans have a pleasant aroma and are starting to gain color.
By 386F they have cracked, sounds like popcorn popping. The color is darker, a light roast.
By 405F the beans are at a medium roast, where I wanted them. The next step is to rapidly cool the beans. To do this they are dumped into this cooling tray and moved around until cool.
I was given the difficult task of opening the chute and emptying the roasted, cooled beans into a tray, where they need to rest for 12-24 hours before bagging them into a vacuum sealed bag. The process is impressive and the taste of your cup of coffee depends on the quality of the beans, the preparation for the roast, the roast and the freshness of the post roasted coffee.
I did not know that when roasting coffee loses about 20% of it’s green bean weight and puffs up also. I try to learn something new everyday, today was full of coffee lessons.
Put you nose up against the screen and smell the aroma of fresh roasted Boquete coffee. If that did not work call Richard for a roasting experience.
Richard is giving interactive coffee tours of Dos Jefes, in this real boutique coffee experience you can learn all you ever wanted to know about coffee production then roast your own organically grown coffee. You get to take a pound you roasted home with you to savor the experience. You can contact Richard at dosjefes@gmail.com or call his cell phone, 507 66 77 77 48 . Richard speaks more English than Spanish so don’t be shy.
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