I attended an extremely high end coffee cupping session...
... showcasing Geisha coffees from Iris Estate in Panama. It was also an opportunity to (briefly) meet Sasa Sestic, the 2015 World Barista Champion and owner of ONA Coffee and Iris Estate.
I find cupping sessions interesting... the coffee is roasted to a level which I don't normally roast to for myself or customers and I find it extremely difficult to extrapolate what I will get out of the coffees roasted for pour over let alone espresso. Nevertheless, the quality of all of these Panama Geisha coffees was really clear in this setting. Beautiful ripe red fruit and berries, sparkling acidity... all of the qualities that I'm personally attracted to when I look for coffee that I want to drink.
The massive barrier here is that the green coffee costs an ENORMOUS amount... multiple hundreds of dollars per kilogram. Can coffees really be worth this much? Who buys these? I've had plenty of Geisha in my time, some remarkably memorable, some pedestrian... always extremely expensive.
What are your thoughts? Would you be interested in purchasing extremely expensive, extremely rare, ultra high quality coffee? We can certainly source the green. Please send me an email!
Speaking of ultra high quality coffee... we have a small amount of Colombia La Riviera Nitro Maceration back in stock... it'll disappear quickly!
To read about a coffee extraction experiment click here
To learn about an experimental coffee club click here
To learn about Coffee Prototypers click here
Purchase Garage Roasters coffee here