Finca Hartmann (front)
  • Finca Hartmann (front)
  • Finca Hartmann (rear)
  • Finca Hartmann (product)

Panama

Finca Hartmann, Pacamara microlot - Panama

250g

*Competition Series*
Pacamara microlot

QUALITY SCORE: 90.50

Cup Notes
Papaya / Blueberry / Raisin / Dried Plum

Suggested for espresso and filter


when we roast

We freshly roast to order all coffees on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (excluding national holidays), and ship the same day! Cut-off time is 11:59pm (UTC+1) of the day before the roast day. *We only ship whole beans*

Details

Producer
Hartmann Family
Country
Panama
Terroir
Chiriqui
Altitude
1400 - 2000 mt
Process
Classic Natural
Arabica cultivar
Pacamara
Picked in
Feb 2019
Arrived in
October 2019
Shipped in
Box + Vacuum pack
Roast profile by
Rubens Gardelli
Roasted on
Customised solid-drum roaster

THE STORY BEHIND

The Hartmann family is considered one of the pioneers of the specialty coffee production in Panama. Their story starts with Alois Strasil Hartmann, born in 1891 in the region of Moravia, then Austrian-Hungarian empire, who laid the ground work for Finca Hartmann, which was founded by his son, Ratibor Hartmann, in 1940.

Today Finca Hartmann is a family enterprise – each member of the family is passionately involved in the management and performs a different function in the cultivation, production, quality control, marketing and tourism offer of the farm. Coffee for them is a way of life, their culture, their family – a lot of work, but also a lot of love. Their harvest employees return every year, as do their buyers, because both the employees and the buyers like their vision: working in harmony with nature, working the land without destroying it. The finca consists of several smaller farms/lots, all located between 1.300 and 2.000 m above sea level with nearly 100hectares  of forest reserves bordering on the Parque Nacional de La Amistad. The coffee is grown under the shade of native rainforest trees that have been here for many years. The Hartmanns try not to cut trees, they replant native trees and plantains to maintain the natural cycle and a healthy soil and fauna all with the aim to sustain a long-term quality coffee production cycle. 

The Hartmanns are also experimenting with new varietals, that have not been present in Panama before, trying to find varietals that feel at home in Panama, figuring out the right terroir for each new varietal on which it performs best.

Finca Hartmann (story)

THE VARIETY

Pacamara is a hybrid created at the end of the 1950s in El Salvador by the Institute for Coffee Research (ISIC). Created by crossing the Pacas variety (an El Salvadoran mutation of Bourbon) with Maragogype it gets its name from the first 4 letters of each of its parents.

It possesses traits from both parents. Its relatively short stature and high productivity are inherited from the Pacas variety, and, like the Maragogype, Pacamara is known for its large cherries. It tends to be more productive than the Maragogype and it is known to produce an attractive cup.

The variety is highly susceptible to coffee leaf rust. It is not homogenous, plants are not stable from one generation to another.

Finca Hartmann (variety)

THE FERMENTATION PROCESS

Dry process seems simple: pick the fruit, lay it out in the sun until it turns from red to brown to near-back, and then hull off off the thick, dried outer layer in one step to reveal the green bean. It is a method suited to arid regions, where the sun and heat can dry the seed inside the intact fruit skin.
It's often referred to as "natural coffee" because of its simplicity, and because the fruit remains intact and undisturbed, a bit like drying grapes into raisins. Since it requires minimal investment, the dry process method is a default to create cheap commodity-grade coffee in areas that have the right climate capable of drying the fruit and seed.
But it’s a fail in humid or wet regions. If the drying isn't progressing fast enough, the fruit degrades, rots or molds.

Dry-processed coffees can also be wildly inconsistent. If you want a cleanly-fruited, sweet, intense cup, dry process (DP) takes more hand labor than the wet process. Even the most careful pickers will take green unripe or semi-ripe coffee off the branch as they pick red, ripe cherry. If these are not removed in the first days of drying, the green turns to brown that is hard to distinguish from the ripe fruit.

All the coffee on the farm is shade grown, under lots of native, beneficial trees, meaning they give a lot back to the soil through nitrogen fixing roots or seeds they drop that act as natural fertilizer.
The natural process is started on African raised beds, after picking at the ripest stage. The Hartmanns are very careful that not one drop of water touches the cherries between harvesting and them going on the beds,
since water would losen the mucilage from the skin and the beans and then the
sugars would not be transferred as well
into the beans, as if they are kept dry.


Depending on the weather conditions
they are dried outside between 12 and
17 days down to 14.% humidity which is
when they go into mechanical driers,
where they are finished drying down to
11%-11.5%. In the mechanical driers they
try to create the same conditions as
outside, meaning they dry them slow,
without too much heat, and a lot of air
flow (which is much more important than heat when drying the beans properly and to the core). Sometimes they even switch the driers off at night to let the beans rest.

Finca Hartmann (fermentation)