Crown Jewel Colombia Circasia Edwin Noreña Carbonic Galaxy Hops Cofermented Gesha

Taste

Taste Analysis by Isabella Vitaliano

Hops is back and better than ever! No, seriously, I mean it. Edwin Noreña – an impressive producer that continues to win our hearts for the third year in a row. Once again we have been able to get our hands on this galaxy hopped coffee by Edwin and it is the best one yet.

If you have bought this coffee in previous years, you’ll recognize the distinct hopped flavor coming from this coffee. It has taken on a new twist of elegance with a bit more florals and cohesiveness in the profile. This coffee is already at an excellent caliber, and Edwin is taking it even further. It’s clear he continues to refine his processes to produce the best coffee he possible can.

Hops is obviously in this coffee, but the team also got notes of sweet honey, botanicals, white tea and lemongrass.

The botanicals ebb and flow from pine-like, to jasmine, to tarragon, to coriander. More floral than previous years but still keeping it tame(ish), this is a major indicator to the team that Edwin is still refining his process. Whether you are new to this coffee or a return buyer – you’ll be pleased with the results.

Source

Source Analysis by Chris Kornman with Charlie Habegger 

Co-fermentation in coffee is highly experimental and wildly controversial, and it’s worth investigating what exactly this coffee is, how it’s been processed, and who is responsible. 

Edwin Noreña is the farmer and inheritor of Finca Campo Hermoso, following three prior generations. Edwin’s contribution to the family legacy would be to convert the farm into a specialty coffee powerhouse, with a specific focus on fermentation technique and cultivar selection. Noreña is an agroindustrial engineer by trade with graduate-level studies in biotechnology and is well-connected and highly aspirational coffee producer who focuses on cultivating carefully curated varieties paired with precise processing methods, designed to express the most surprising, memorable, and delicious coffees possible within his resources. Finca Campo Hermoso concentrates on growing cultivars far apart from the nationally-distributed hybrids of Castillo or Colombia, or the traditional Caturra. Instead the farm has in production Pink and Yellow Bourbon, Sidra, Gesha, and Cenicafe 1, a relatively new resistant hybrid developed Colombia’s national coffee research institute of the same name. 

Noreña explained his methods and philosophy recently in an interview. His audacious-sounding coffee could be taken as evidence of the producer’s (figurative) intoxication with fermentation’s power. However, for Noreña, his application of these processes is intended to be in service of the coffee’s inherent flavors, emerging out of respect. “It was a development that we adapted from the world of wine to enhance the flavors of coffee, always trying to intensify each coffee process using the original coffee flavors.” 

This is evidenced by Noreña’s reliance on the coffee’s mossto as a primary additive. He’s literally just adding extra coffee juice and selected microbes from a previous fermentation batch of the same cultivar (a technique known in other beverage-making circles as “backslopping”). “Mossto is a catalyst that helps to accelerate, control and enhance chemical reactions during coffee fermentation,” he explains. 

Ok, so what exactly is happening with this Carbonic Galaxy Hop process? Let’s break it down: 

Noreña picked this coffee from Gesha trees, using a brix meter to selectively harvest, after which the cherries soak underwater for about an hour. Primary fermentation takes 72 hours and occurs in whole cherry, in a sealed tank. The coffee is then 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. 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. 

The result is a highly amplified flavor profile, with extreme floral notes, bombastic dark fruit tones, and an incredible sweetness. This is an adventurous coffee, geared towards the curious and open-minded, and we’re proud to add it to our list of Crown Jewels. 

Green

Green Analysis by Isabella Vitaliano 

For as crazy as the name is, the specs of this coffee are clean across the board. Edwin has perfected his methodology and no bean has gone unturned! Gesha is typically a slightly larger bean but in these specs we see these beans are a little smaller, sitting in the 15-16 range. In the ideal ranges for both moisture content and water activity, you’ll have no trouble making the most out of this coffee in the roaster. 

Potentially to your surprise, Gesha was not initially sent to Panama from Ethiopia. Costa Rica received the seed in the 50s at a research station called CATIE project, but it was abandoned because it was not rust resistant. Once it failed in Costa Rica the seed was then sent to Panama in 60s and by 2004 the Peterson family won Best of Panama auction using the Gesha cultivar.  

You may be confused as to whether you should use the spelling Gesha or Geisha, as they are often interchangeably. Check out Jenn’s article here to learn more.   

Diedrich

Diedrich IR5 Analysis by Doris Garrido  

One of our most anticipated coffees is back! I proudly declare myself a fan of coffee producer Edwin Noreña. His meticulous and ingenious work on co-fermented coffees continues to surprise us with its exceptional quality and explosion of flavors. 

This coffee maintains its botanical flavors, enhanced with hits of ginger, tarragon, cannabis, lemongrass and candied sweetness, all culminating in a jasmine tea aftertaste. It tastes as intriguing as it sounds. While it might not be my everyday morning coffee, it is certainly a delicacy to savor or a cup to impress a coffee-loving friend this Christmas. 

Meticulously produced, this coffee performs excellently during roasting. My approach was based on its average density and its 11% moisture content. I aimed to balance the drying time with the yellowing phase finishing with over a minute of post development. 

For my 5lb batch, I charged the roaster at 396F. As it was my first roast of the day, I ensured the drum was preheated using 50% of the airflow to maintain a stable temperature. During the drying phase, I started the gas at the turning point. I waited until this point to observe how quickly the coffee absorbed heat initially, allowing me to calculate the optimal push to spend around 4 minutes in the drying phase. I ended up adding 60% gas and increasing to 70% a minute later as I noticed the need for a bit more heat. I reduced the gas after color change at 308 F/5:23 minutes. For the remainder of the roast, I increased the airflow to 100% during development, having run at 50% from the start. 

The color change occurred early in the roast, at 303F, resulting in 4:57 minutes of drying time. The coffee cracked at 383F, with a total of 4:36 minutes in the yellowing phase and 1 minute and 20 seconds on development. 

Edwin Norena’s consistency work brings us again the ginger and hops characteristics easy to find on the roasting. And with great botanical flavors, candied ginger, horned melon and perfumed jasmine here we have a delightful coffee to roast and taste.  

Aillio

Aillio Bullet R1 IBTS Analysis by Evan Gilman 

Unless otherwise noted, we use both the roast.world site and Artisan software to document our roasts on the Bullet. You can find our roast documentation below, by searching on roast.world, or by clicking on the Artisan links below.  

Generally, we have good results starting our 500g roasts with 428F preheating, P6 power, F2 fan, and d6 drum speed. Take a look at our roast profiles below, as they are constantly changing! 

Another Gesha, another roast that went as smooth as butter. Can a coffee like this, with such a wild profile, really be so easy to roast? Well, yes and no. This coffee has a ton of flavors on offer, but if you’re trying to get something out of it that it doesn’t have, you might get a bit frustrated. If you go in with an open mind, however, you’re going to be pleased as punch.  

I started with a low charge temperature of 437F as I didn’t have much of this coffee to work with (roughly 300g). With P8 power and F2 fan to start, I got this coffee cooking along nicely until turning point, where I decreased power to P7 and increased fan to F2. At peak rate of change of 37.5F/min, I increased fan further to F4, then allowed the roast to ride out until 5:30 / 360F, where I again reduced my vector to P6 power and F5 fan, achieving a gentle downward temperature slope through first crack and development. F6 fan after first crack was my only other adjustment, and the coffee came out of the roaster smelling just like a freshly dropped packet of hops pellets into a batch of hot wort (read: caramelly, herbal, and floral).  

To nobody’s surprise (as long as you’ve been following along with this coffee in recent years), it tasted just like it smelled. The clear difference was that the cup had a lot more complexity than in past years. More ginger-like aromas, floral notes, cannabis, and grapefruit peel overtones came through as well. It’s just a huge and flavorful coffee, and if you’re a fan of a good hoppy IPA, or just unique coffees in general, you’re going to have a good time.  

IKawa

Ikawa Pro V3 Analysis by Author’s Name

Our current Ikawa practice compares two sample roast profiles, originally designed for different densities of green coffee. The two roasts differ slightly in total length, charge temperature, and time spent between color change in first crack. You can learn more about the profiles here.

When it comes to cofermented coffees we have found that there is a lot of leeway roasting. It’s such high intervention processing that it’s a bit hard to mess up.

On the low density roast it presented a softer and more subdued version of this coffee which I particularly enjoyed. The high density roast had hops front and center with lots of jasmine.

If you want to make this more approachable I would go with the low density roast and if you want to amp up the flavors already there, go with the high density roast.

You can roast your own by linking to our profiles in the Ikawa Pro app here:

• Roast 1: Low Density Sample Roast
• Roast 2: High Density Sample Roast

Brew

Brew Analysis by Joshua Wismans

It’s always a treat when Edwin’s coffees show up in our warehouses again, particularly the galaxy-hopped gesha. I’m sure you’ve read that same thing five times already throughout these analyses, but I’m saying it again. This is honestly my favorite year for this coffee. Some of the aggressive pine and ginger from previous years have mellowed, and you can taste Edwin getting better at his craft. 

When brewing this coffee, something we found last year holds true this year (but perhaps even more so) – a little goes a long way. This coffee has an abundance of flavor, so the trick is creating a balanced, nuanced cup. We achieved this through a moderate grind and dosing down to 1:17.65, and even further to 18.75. We started using the Kalita wave and found that it provided a nice round sweetness to balance a more delicate flavor profile. Think stone fruit, hops, floral, dank, sugarcane, and cranberry.  When we used the V60, it was still a delicious cup of coffee, but found more of the hop bitterness, pine, and juniper. The TDS range we recommend is 1.12-1.26 (well below normal).

For this coffee, we recommend a flat bottom brewer, a moderate grind setting, and a low dose.  Enjoy this one-of-a-kind coffee from a maestro of co-fermentation processing.