The Panama Coffee Roasting Competition 2023 (PCRC 2023) is Japan's first roasting competition using only high-quality Panamanian coffee, held from July to September 2023.
CROWD ROASTER was involved in the tournament as a sponsor and official media, and the awards ceremony where the winners were announced was held at CROWD ROASTER booth at SCAJ2023.

As a special collaboration project with PCRC 2023, CROWD ROASTER will be selling a special tasting box made with the beans selected in the competition finals!

  This special box contains the best of the best Panama coffee, roasted by two expert roasters, and can only be enjoyed here.

In this article, we will introduce in detail "La Hueria Geisha Natural N97 Anaerobic Lot 2," the final candidate bean in the " Geisha Division" and used in this set's " Geisha Box."

 

<Basic information>

La Huella, Geisha , Natural N97, Geisha Lot 2
Farm: La Huella Cafe de Panamá
Producer: Pedro Moss

Country of Origin: Panama Region: Boquete, Chiriquí

Pedro Moss, owner of La Huelia

 

At La Huelia farm in Boquete, Panama, farmer Pedro Moss lays the coffee cherries in African beds in his own landscaped processing plant and processes them day and night.
In order to be environmentally friendly, they have developed their own fermentation technology to avoid using large amounts of water. Their commitment to the honey process and the quality of the finished product are so great that they are called the best in the world.

Huella means "fingerprint" in Spanish. We adopted this as the brand mark because when communicating with the indigenous harvesters, who do not use writing, they use their fingerprints instead of signing.

 

Each piece is picked by skilled harvesters and carefully finished by hand, which is a guarantee of quality.
His dedication to quality led to him winning the Golden Folk Award at the British Great Taste Awards, also known as the "Oscars of food," in 2019, and he achieved the same feat in 2020 when five of his varieties of roasted beans won awards.

"N97" is the new flagship Panamanian coffee, perfected by the lone innovator Pedro Mos through years of research and techniques.

About 10 years ago, in the highlands of Boquete, with its diverse geography and weather conditions, he selected the most suitable land for refining coffee after thorough research into the amount of rainfall, temperature, humidity, and wind direction throughout the year. He then carried stones there himself to build an enclosure, lined up African beds, and began the coffee process.

 

He visits farms that he has personally selected, and then harvests the cherries. With almost no help from anyone other than a few local friends, he stirs the cherries day and night, monitoring their condition and processing them, which has led to people around him calling him "the man most particular about process in the world."

 

Furthermore, in order to preserve the lives of local people, especially children, and the surrounding natural environment, the company has been working to minimize the resources and energy required for coffee production. As a result, the company has focused on a refining method that utilizes the fermentation process rather than the conventional process that uses large amounts of water, and has conducted its own research into this.

The subsequent pandemic and severe extreme weather prompted the anaerobic process to come to the forefront of Panamanian farms, but even before that, Pedro Moss had perfected a method of bringing out unprecedented cherry aromas and the terroir to the fullest through his own strict control of fermentation.

Despite receiving global acclaim that goes beyond Panama, Pedro Mos continues to explore and practice his processes in order to reach even greater heights. Starting with the 2020/21 harvest lot, he has deliberately adopted a new brand name, "Panama Terroir," rather than "Panama Geisha ." He has also begun producing the highest grade coffee, "N97," based on the concept of a "perfect score" in his own evaluation.

 

This is the second batch, named Lot 2 of the 2022 process, and is a natural anaerobic product that has been praised as a work that has made a leap to another dimension from the previous year's work, which already had the impact of N97.

La Huella currently wholesales raw beans to only three buyers in the world (→ by 2024, only two) whom Pedro Mos has absolute trust in, due to his commitment to quality from the beginning until the end of the cup of coffee. After "Panama Geisha " became the pinnacle of coffee, the brand "Panama Coffee" should become synonymous with the next pinnacle. His brand "La Huella Cafe de Panama" is filled with his passionate message and intentions.