Colombia Geisha Coffee Edwin Noreña
$29.00 – $317.00
We taste Honeycomb, Botanicals, & Strawberries. Try it today!
This coffee is complex, versatile, and utterly memorable. This rare experimental lot is our favorite this season for espresso and pour-over.
Colombia geisha coffee beans for sale. Wilton Benitez coffee. Gesha coffee bean. Unlike haymans coffee, this is fresh roasted.
Floral, Distinctive, and Delicious
Double-carbonic, galaxy hop-infused, mossto-fermented, honey process Geisha. There’s a lot going on. The flavor is indulgent. Subtle as well as rambunctious florals collide. Lavender and Hops. Spices and herbs alongside ripe fruits. Edwin Noreña produced this magical nano-lot on his infamous farm, Finca Campo Hermoso. We at Rigby Roastery are picky when it comes to a co-fermented coffees. Edwin’s alchemy has us enchanted. It’s extravagant. Cedar. Pine. Strawberry? It is a succulent chaos. Dial back the TDS, lower the coffee to water ratio, and gain more control. What interests us most, is the impressive unconventional process styles that emerge out of Edwin Noreña’s respect for the combined potential of this coffee’s varietal and terroir.
This coffee is a conversation starter. Bombastic, perfumey Geisha is what we’ve all been reveling in for decades now. This is a testament to that history and a nod to what else is possible. The flowers are there. Lots of rose, hibiscus, and lavender leading the way. Luxurious complexity arrives in gooey, mild bitters and an herbaceous, hoppy effervescent bite. It’s also deeply fruited. Delicate melon, juicy citrus. This is coffee maximalism. It’s head-turning and over the top like a well-performed improvisational jazz.
Most of all, it showcases complex botanicals. Floral and herbaceous. Ginger and lemongrass. Jasmine and geranium. All the classic flavors of Colombian Geisha coffee, and candy like sweetness. Zippy wisps of champagne and Hazy I.P.A.’s are aglow under the brightness of cardamom and rosemary spice notes.
Mild spices like white pepper and savory herbs like marjoram alongside ripe, sweet citrus. A cotton candy and bubblegum sweetness becomes a top note after the coffee cools down. Effervescent hints of Veuve Clicquot champagne and Chimay Triple golden ale make up the bottom of the profile.
Edwin Noreña produced this magical micro-lot on his infamous farm, Campo Hermoso. Edwin’s alchemy has us enchanted. It is a conversation invoking brew rich in nostalgic qualities. It is elegant and futuristic. It reminds us of Sudan Rume.
We especially enjoyed it in a conical pour over. Bust out the V60 or the origami. We recommend you dial back the TDS (about 1.33) and lower the coffee to water ratio (1:16.5) to create more clarity and structure. This produces a complex cup that was also palatable for the average coffee drinker.
Notably, as the grind gets finer it gets a lot bolder and the savory notes become more concentrated. Furthermore, these brews also tend to get more spicy and rambunctious.
This one sparkles as a wacky but well structured espresso. It is full of surprises, and fascinates us with every new shot we pull. We recommend 18.5 grams in and 41 grams out at about 28-30 seconds for a tangy acidity and a creamy body.
About Geisha Coffee
Exploding in popularity in the first decade of the millennium, Colombia is considered one of the best terroirs for Geishas. Quality graders, exporters, and specialty customers searching for the finest coffee in the world agree.
Perhaps you first heard about it at a coffee shop or expo. Maybe someone brought up Panama. The Peterson family’s Hacienda La Esmeralda maybe. Inevitably whether these expensive specialty coffees did or did not live up to the high prices will come up. Coffee aficionados everywhere have plenty to say about it.
Any experienced coffee drinker or coffee lover will tell you that there is truth to the hype. They will also tell you that only well harvested, well roasted, and well brewed cups of coffee made with Geisha will be worth your time and money.
This arabica coffee species most likely originated near the border of Ethiopia and Sudan. The Gesha or Geisha varietal was collected in Ethiopia’s Gori Gesha forest in the 1930’s. The Geisha coffee bean is like no other. Expect flavors and aromas similar to the high end coffees of Ethiopia but also palates unique to the terroirs outside of Ethiopia where it is now commonly grown like Panama and Colombia.
One reason it is like no other is that for most of coffee’s history is was difficult to grow native varietals outside of Ethiopia. It has only happened very rarely up until the last century. However, after one of these rare happenings, Geisha arrived at the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica in the 1950s. Thereafter, it spread to other Central and South American countries.
In the 1960’s, government officials from Panama brought Geisha seeds from the CATIE to farmers in their country. Germplasm banks and coffee researchers utilized the first recorded translation of the varietal name as “Geisha” but this spelling is now used interchangeably with “Gesha”.
About Edwin Noreña Coffee
Edwin Noreña is a fourth generation farmer. In agricultural endeavors, it helps to have vision, possess a persistent attitude, and ultimately understand how to invest your passion into your project in ways that yield significant results. Campo Hermoso is an innovative project operated by a farmer who embodies all of those traits, Edwin Noreña.
Edwin’s willingness to think outside the box and excitement for weaving together tradition with new innovations in agronomical science have only grown. His journey into coffee cultivation and processing in his youth helps him to realize his affinity for coffee farming today. In the last decade, he’s become more focused on technological advances in cultivation and processing. The potential for modernizing coffee farming with advanced methods and new machines while perfecting the tried and true best-practices of his life’s work results in remarkable coffees. They demand the attention of the global community. We are thrilled to offer this rare limited coffee from a fan favorite.
Everything about his operation is cutting-edge. There’s a microbiology laboratory on site alongside the quality laboratory and processing facilities. He grows more than 20 coffee varietals. Firstly, meticulous processes including rigorous selection, sterilization, sorting and characterization of cherries, and an initial controlled anaerobic fermentation are applied to each lot. Even further processing may be applied to the lot according to the most prolific potential profile.
One of the reasons this is such a well-known farm is because Edwin has perfected advanced processing methods alongside his team. Macerating cherries and controling the temperature. His techniques reduce the risk of embryo damage and safeguard volatile compounds that are flavor and aroma precursors by providing for an expertly controlled fermentation. This is the third season we get to feature this coffee, and we are always blown away.
Agricultural endeavors are always an exercise in variability and the randomness of nature. It’s a delight to see the hard work and adaptability of a seasoned agronomist coming to life in a harvest like this one.
A recent interview with Edwin reveals some of the method behind his madness. He draws inspiration from wine making and the ways that fermentation can enhance the inherent flavors of the coffee. In the past, methods borrowed from the wine making world, such as carbonic maceration, have proven to enhance the presence of aromatic molecules in the beans.
About the Processing
- Firstly, they pick the Geisha cherries using a brix meter to selectively harvest only the most perfectly ripe fruit. They sort them to remove any defective cherries.
- Secondly, they perform a whole cherry 72 hour carbonic maceration in sealed tanks.
- Thirdly, the coffee is pulped and set for secondary fermentation for 96 hours, backslopped with the mossto from the first fermentation. This mossto is infused with Galaxy Hops and is recirculated every twenty-four hours for a total of four days in secondary maceration.
- Finally, this heavily fermented “honey” coffee is then taken to raised beds to dry for 22 days, followed by a controlled warehouse humidity stabilization for an additional 8 days.
Edwin Noreña Coffee comes from Quindio
Colombia is known for growing beans that are rich in acidity. Certainly, cups of supremo are known for their hearty body and feel. Stone fruit and caramel are common parts of the cup profile. These Geisha coffee beans are all of those things, but with the added bonus of rare genetic cup qualities and immaculate processing.
Quindío makes up only 0.2% of the land mass of Colombia. It is the country’s second smallest department overall. It’s positioned centrally between Bogotá, Cali, and Medellín, the largest and most influential cities there. It is also perched upon the central cordillera of the massive Andes divide. The colorfully decorated towns, majestic tropical landscapes, and high elevation natural reserves draw lots of air traffic and tourism to the region. The lowest elevation points in Quindío are still well over 1000 MASL, and the almost entirely mountainous department is home to a multitude of coffee farms ranging from small family owned plots to large, ambitious projects.
Precious few coffees seem to make it out into the world from Quindío compared to other parts of Colombia. Huila, Columbia produces 200,000,000 kilos of beans annually. It is the top coffee producing department in Colombia with nearly 100,000 family farms covering over 350,000 acres of farmland. Since 2008, Huila has produced more coffee than traditional coffee growing regions Antioquia and the Central Valley. It is also one of the first regions to embrace the specialty market.
Pitalito in the south of Huila is the largest producer of coffee in Colombia. Accordingly, it is home to many Cup of Excellence winning farms. These farms are in a country that is the third largest producer of coffee in the world. It is the largest producer of washed and Arabica coffees. Comparatively, you probably won’t find any robusta in Colombia.
Where else are they growing Colombia Geisha Coffee?
The Cauca region is the cradle of the Colombian massif, which is the source of most of Colombia’s major rivers such as the Cauca and Magdalena. Cauca is closer to the equator so it receives the most possible hours of sunshine throughout the year. It sports a stable climate throughout the year and the farms enjoy the protection of the high mountains from the winds and humidity that comes from the Pacific.
However, growing coffee in this region can be difficult due to the cooler night time temperatures that aren’t common in other areas of Colombia. This is a blessing and a curse though as it slows the ripening of cherries and can enhance acidity and sweet and fruity compounds in the cup.
The Puracé and Sotará volcanoes here enrich the soil with sulfur. Sulfur interacts with the sugars in the beans and creates a caramel, honey, and apple aroma and flavor in the coffee grown here.
Cauca is home to many micro-lots and nano-lots that are unique to the many cloud forests that exist there. The region is a heterogeneous, mountainous place and the smallholder farms here tend to produce one-of-a-kind coffees produced at different times of the year in different places.
For more delicious hops infused coffee beans check out our Sebastián Ramirez El Placer
Colombia geisha coffee beans for sale. Wilton Benitez coffee. Gesha coffee bean.
