Way back in the past I was a judge at the PanamaPanama coffee ranges from medium quality lower altitude farms to those at 1600 - 1800 meters centered in the area of Boquete in the Chirqui district near the... ...more Cupping
Cupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest.... ...more Competition: Here are my photos and notes!
This was my second year as a judge in the Best of Panama cupping competition… and here is the esteemed panel of coffee folks that I had the pleasure to cup with. Overall, the panel was mostly U.S. but we did have Bolivian, Japanese, Costa Rican and Panamanian judges -oh, and Maine too.
The jury for the 2003 Best of Panama. 
We had several days in the capital, Panama City, before we flew up to the coffee growing regions, where the cupping actually took place. We did the touristy things. This is at the ruins of the oldest, original city, away from the canal. It was founded on August 15th, 1519 and later invaded and destroyed by pirates Morgan and Lafite in 1671. It was indefensible! 
…and these are ruins in the “new, old” section of the city, called the Casco Viejo. This Historic District, which developed after 1671, preserves in its street pattern the early layout; the architecture is an unusual mixture of Spanish, French, and Early American styles. It’s a beautiful, Caribbean capital style, and if you like things rustic, there is still plenty of it in this section of the city. Unfortunately, we had to stay in a highrise hotel in the financial area. 
There are beautiful churches in the Casco Viejo. I really liked the features on this plaster side-altar castings. 
My favorite statue: obelisk to a chicken. 
My favorite grafitti: the first time I have ever seen an email address used as such. 
Yours truly, and Mr Hayashi ( a Japansese coffee consultant), with Stuart from Caribou coffee in the background. The hardest part of cupping isn’t really evaluating coffee: it is holding a pencil, a clipboard, your cupping spoon, and a spit cup (in case a spitoon isn’t close by). 
We held the cupping at a very large house on one of the farms -a real palace with a commanding view of the Boquete region. On the first day we actually cupped the full set of 26 finalists in 4 flights (3 sets of 6, one of 8), narrowing the field to 15 for the second day. 
After the first day of cupping we had time to go out to some mills to see the different processing practices. The very tail end of the coffee harvest had been completed just days before we came, and only a few ripe cherries that were left behind could be seen on the trees. This is Ricardo MacIntyre at his family’s mill, Kotowa Coffee, in the Palo Alto region of Boquete. He uses both traditional fermentation wet-process, and de-muscilage. Behind Ricardo is the depulper that remoives the outer skin of the coffee cherry fruit using friction. It also can remove unripe coffee cherry since they are harder and will not pass through the perforated drum rotating inside the pulper. 
Ricardo also does the dry-milling at his Beneficio (mill). After the coffee is removed from the outer parchment layer it is run through the vibrating Oliver table, which uses at air bed to sort coffee by density. It sends dense coffee to the top of the table, and light-weight coffee gravitate to the low end and are sold as seconds. 
Ricardo has also maintained his family’s historic wet mill on the property. This was built in 1921, powered by a small stream diverted right through the center of the mill, and a paddlewheel that could be engaged and disengaged with a clutch -some of that mechanism seen here. At the top of the picture, check out that amazing solid wood cog… 
I realized on my previous trips that I never had any pictures of myself. This time I kept handing my camera off to other people begging them to take a picture of me. I went overboard -I have way too many pictures of myself this time! Anyway, this is part of the antique wet mill, a sluice box in a way, where they would wash de-pulped coffee through with water after fermenting off the fleshy-fruty “muscilage” that sticks to the parchment. After this process, it would be ready to go out onto the drying patios. 
I peeked into a beautiful tool room at the mill, with an antique hand-pulper and all the other hand tools used to build and maintain the mill. 
And here is the building that houses the mill, Cafe Kotowa, the family MacIntyre, original Boquete coffee farmers. 
Plinio Ruiz is the brother that oversees the mill. Here you can see the small box in the foreground, which is one “Lata”. The lata is used as a measure to pay coffee pickers for their work. In fact … take a look at the next picture… 
Me and Plinio Ruiz. 
After this a few of us went on to the Cafe Ruiz mill, owned by the Ruiz family. They process coffee for other small farms, and own a few of the really nice farms that we have bought coffee from: La Berlina, Finca Maunier, and others. 
I am a big fan of roadside attractions. Here was my favorite; giant strawberries where you could walk up to the window and order fresh Boquete-grown strawberry juices. But the reason for the giant ant, I do not know. 
Back on the farm … Here I am diving into the organic mulch at Finca Carmen. This is the skin of the coffee cherry that is stripped off as the first step of the milling process, and makes a rich fertilizer. 
The idea with picking the tail end of the crop, the Rebusco, is that the plant will not produce as much flower, and hence cherry, if the old cherry is not removed. But as new flowers emerge, you don’t want to be touching the plant too much: damage the flowers and you will have no cherry for the next crop! Flowers were already abundant on some trees. They are fragrant and beautiful! 
Here I am with Carlos Franceschi, who is now running the family farm (Carmen was his grandmother). This farm uses the de-muscilage process where the muscilage is stripped off the parchment layer using friction, rather than traditional fermentation. Here we are seeing the tail end of the crop that is not sold for export, called “Rebusco”. It is dried on screens in the whole cherry, and either sold for low grade coffee (without the farm’s name on it) or simply used by the pickers for their own personal consumption. I was very impressed with the high altitude and excellent practices of Carlos and Finca Carmen -and the coffee later proved its excellence as it won the #3 spot in the competition. In fact, we will receive some of this coffee in late May or June 2003. 
After visting Finca Carmen we went to the much larger Finca Los Cantares, an old farm in the Volcan area of Chirqui. Along with La Fortunesa (which is mostly bought up by Starbucks) Los Cantares has a lot of its original, tall Typica trees. 
Typica trees need a lot of care, and don’t quite produce as much as other varietals, but if properly cared for they are remarkably hardy. Here is a picture of a very old Typica trunk (probably 40+ years!) that was pruned down (trees are often cut to a stump every 8-10 years or so) and continues to produce from smaller shoots. 
The nursery at Finca Los Cantares. Farms can buy ready-to-plant juvenile coffee trees, but you can never be 100% sure if they are the varietal they claim to be. It is more work, but the safe practice is to do all your own re-cultivation. 
There was a bit of ripe cherry on the Red Catuai trees at Finca Los Cantares. You can also see a little bit of the coffee disease “Ojo de Gallo” (rooster’s eye) on the leaves. It’s a problem that, if unattended, can do great damage to a crop. But it is everywhere, and farmers must simply care to make sure it doesn’t spread, and live with it. 
Sunset with the Volcano Baru in the background, at Finca Los Cantares. 
They told me they did a little roasting for the local market at Los Cantares, on hand-made roasters that were built by a local. I had to see them! These were incredible machines, considering all the work that would go into building a roaster from scratch. I don’t know about that venting though… 
… and here is their little hand made sample roaster which roasts about 3 Lbs. of coffee. 
… and for comparison, we go to Finca Hartmann, and a commercial Brazilian sample roaster built by Pinhalense. This little propane-fired roaster is not cheap but I believe it is a 1 kilo machine. 
Going back to the Ruiz mill here, but I just can’t keep my hand out of coffee it seems… Here is a bag of “Triage” coffee, the stuff that is culled out in the milling and is also sold for local market consumption. There is some controversy around Triage because many feel that this coffee should not be sold anywhere, and should be destroyed. The logic is that these coffees interfere with pricing, and bring down the price on all coffees. And it is true! 
I keep talking about parchment, and here it is. This is what coffee looks like after it has been dried down to 12% moisture and is left to rest, in “Reposo” for anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months, before it is dry-milled (hulled out of the parchment), gravity-sorted, hand-prepped, bagged in burlap, and loaded up for shipment to a Sweet Maria’s or the like. The coffee in parchment is also called “Pergamino” and once it is milled it is called “Oro.” 
Once again, here is the Rebusco after it is dried. This coffee is sold as seconds for local consumption, and Sr. Hartmann was a little suprised we were interested in it. But this is also what your dry-processed coffees look like before they are de-hulled … this is what Harar and Yemen and others would be like. 
The Next day we were cupping rustic coffees from small farmer co-ops. The cupping was hosted by the Hartmann family at Finca Santa Clara, more often called Finca Hartmann. We were in very cramped quarters this time, but there were few coffees to cup, and we simply split into 2 groups. The coffees were from lower altitude, less traditional growing areas, many grown by the indigenous peoples on very small lots. 
Mr Spoonface, yours truly. These rustic coffees were a bit too far on the wild end, some tasted more like a vegetable garden then coffee: oniony, herby, earthy. Others had some taints from being stored with too much moisture, or plastic-rubber taint from processing. But the idea was to offer constructive criticism, and to point out the positive aspects of the cup character too. 
At Finca Hartmann, here are some of the indigenous people (we were all listening to a band that played during lunch … these folks seem very shy and kept their distance). Interestingly, I have noticed in every Central American country I have traveled in that the women wear most of the traditional embroidered and beaded clothing, and the men wear none, or very little. 
After all the cupping was over and the winners announced, we had an afternoon on the last day in the mountains to explore the National Park around the Volcan Baru. A few of us hired a naturalist and I photographed this tranluscent butterfly on our hike. 
There was amazing bamboo on the hike – 50 feet and taller. They had some nasty spikes on each segment, something I had never seen on bamboo in the states. 
I happen to own a coin that would have been paid to a coffee picker for the equivalent of 1 Lata of coffee. It is probably from the 1930’s, marked with the La Berlina farm name and Horqueta, which is the region of Boquete (and the name of the stream I believe) where La Berlina is! 
Finally, we flew up to David, an agriculture center, and then to Boquete. If you have ever taken regional flights in Central America you recognize this “bread box with wings” -I think it is called the Shorter. Actually they have a great track record for safety, and (perhaps a reason for the name) can land on very short runways. 
From the airplane, you can see the high range in the background, the highlands of the Chirqui province where the good coffee is grown, and the low ranchlands in the foreground. 
I happen to own a coin that would have been paid to a coffee picker for the equivalent of 1 Lata of coffee. It is probably from the 1930’s, marked with the La Berlina farm name and Horqueta, which is the region of Boquete (and the name of the stream I believe) where La Berlina is! 
Puppy Power! Panama Style
The Results of our efforts as judges in the 2003 Best of Panama Competition:
| Place | Points | Name | Micro Region | Sample Owner | Beneficio In Kenya, a "Factory" is actually a coffee wet mill (called a washing station in other parts of Africa) where the fresh cherry is brought for wet-processing. It... ...more |
| 1 | 91.40 | Coopcafeb Lote A | Boquete | Cooperativa de Productores de Café Boquete | Coopcafeb |
| 2 | 89.38 | Finca Spanish 101: Finca is the Spanish word for farm. Sometimes the term Hacienda is used to imply an Estate, which would mean the farm has its own wet-mill.... ...more Lerida | Alto Quiel | John Collins | Finca Lerida |
| 3 | 88.05 | Carmen EstateA "coffee estate" is used to imply a farm that has its own processing facility, a wet-mill. In Spanish this is called an Hacienda. A Finca (farm) does... ...more | Paso Ancho | Mirza de Aguilera | Carmen Estate |
| 4 | 87.96 | Las Victorias Estate Coffee | Cañas Verdes | Dr. Leonidas Pretelt | Casa Ruiz, S.A. |
| 5 | 87.46 | Elida Estate Coffee | Alto Quiel | Thatcher’s Coffee Familia Lamastus | Casa Ruiz, S.A. |
| 6 | 87.27 | Finca Hartmann Ojo de Agua Estate | Santa Clara | Familia Hartmann | Hartmann & Casa Ruiz, S.A. |
| 7 | 87.06 | Café Ole | Barriles, Volcan | Ramon Garcia de Paredes | Café Volcan Baru, S.A. |
| 8 | 86.69 | El Burro Estate | El Burro, Boquete | Thatcher’s Coffee Familia Lamastus | Casa Ruiz, S.A. |
| 9 | 86.23 | Café Jurutungo | Piedra de Candela | Finca Gallardo | Marcel Miranda |
| 10 | 86.00 | Café Eleta, El Capitan | Piedra de Candela | Fernando Eleta, CIATSA | Café Volcan Baru, S.A. |
| 11 | 85.03 | Coopcafeb 2 | Boquete | Cooperativa de Productores de Café Boquete | Coopcafeb |
| 12 | 85.00 | Don Bosco Estate Coffee | Piedra de Candela | Choli de Moreno | Finca Don Bosco |
