Panama - Hachi Kōyo Gesha

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Lightest Roaster Influence: First time we've roasted a coffee with this style of processing so we've treated it like most other washed Geshas, only with the smallest possible batch size we can get away with in the S35 (4kg at a time!). Roasted for peak aromatics and acidity/juice, the most interesting thing we find is the slightly matte appearance to the beans.

Best Rested: 4 weeks+

Filter: 62g/L, 96°C when fresh but when well rested you can go down to 92-93°C.

Espresso: 18g in, 50g out, 18-22s - EXCELLENT soup & turbos

We’re tasting: Delightful floral aromatics of orange blossom and jasmine. In the cup it's super creamy  - we're finding orange soda, tangerine zest, lychee and wild strawberry, with heaps of structured florals - rose & honeysuckle as the dominant notes. There's a hint of positive herbality - somewhere between basil and lemon verbena . As it cools becoming a lot like raspberry jelly with vanilla ice-cream. A stunner to be sure.

Traceability

The Story

Having cupped a bunch of generously provided fresh crop samples from Hachi, this coffee was one of the top lots on every blind table we put down, and when we learned more about the processing it was a total lock.
This coffee is precision processed via enzymatic/temperature based means with almost zero microbial fermentation. Having tried pectinase based zero-ferment coffees before, they show the inherent green coffee/genetic expression cleanly - but often you need the fermentation to unlock the rest of the potential. But this coffee was processed with more than pectinase, and when we dug into the secondary enzyme -  β-glucosidase - we learned a whole heap of interesting stuff.

β-glucosidase is an enzyme that cleaves glycosidic bonds, the chemical linkages that hold certain aromatic compounds to sugar molecules within the green coffee. In this bound state, these compounds are non-volatile and effectively odourless; the coffee carries them through the cherry, the mucilage, and the drying process without expressing them. β-glucosidase breaks that bond, liberating monoterpenes and norisoprenoids, which are aromatic compound classes that are very much associated with the floral and fruit character of Gesha as free, volatile aglycones.

This is established practice in winemaking, where the same enzyme is applied to aromatic varieties to unlock terpene-bound precursors, and has been studied extensively in tea processing for the same reason. The substrates it acts on including linalool, geraniol, and β-damascenone glycosides have been confirmed to ne present in green Coffea arabica.

Combining pectinase with β-glucosidase, under sealed anoxic conditions at a temperature chosen to sit within the active range of both enzymes while suppressing microbial activity entirely, is a super unique combo. The former clears the mucilage; the latter unlocks what was already there, and in that sense they achieve precisely the same output effects as microbial fermentation in the act of washed coffee processing - that is to say, clean parchment and increased aromatic complexity, but without any of the secondary aromatics that the microbial metabolism can create. This is, in effect, the purest essence of the genetic potential of the Panamanian Gesha accession.

HACHI PROJECT:

The Hachi Project emerged in 2024 as a binational venture uniting three distinct areas of expertise: Diego Bermudez's microbiology and fermentation research from Colombia, Allan Hartmann's generational coffee knowledge from Panama, and Matheus Antonaci's commercial infrastructure connecting both origins to global markets.

The Hartmann family have produced coffee in the Chiriquí highlands for over eighty years. Their farms border Parque Nacional de La Amistad, Central America's largest rainforest reserve, where volcanic soils, persistent mist, and cool nights at elevation create conditions particularly suited to Gesha cultivation. The Jurutungo area, where Finca Angelica sits, benefits from this same environmental context.

What distinguishes the Hachi Project is its philosophical position on high technical intervention - rather than using fermentation to synthesise flavour compounds or impose a signature house style, the approach's stated intense is to "maximising the genetic expression already present in each variety" - the laboratory work, the enzyme selection, the controlled fermentation environments all serve to refine and enhance what the coffee would naturally offer, while correcting for factors that might otherwise detract from the cup.

The project itself sets out quite a deliberate (and to some, provocative) stance within ongoing debates about speciality coffee's boundaries. The project operates on the premise that scientific precision and providence-driven character need not be in opposition. Whether the industry at large accepts this position remains contested, but the commercial interest from speciality roasters globally suggests a market exists for coffees that occupy this space. Research indicates that viable coffee-growing regions face significant contraction due to climate change. The Hachi Project's investments in tissue cloning, micrografting, and soil regeneration are being developed specifically with this threat in mind, developing methods that could enable quality production as traditional growing conditions shift. The premium lots we buy today fund this work, and if it can be scaled it represents a fundamental advance on the frontiers of coffee - even moreso than just heavy technical processing creating crazy results in the cup.

When considered in a vacuum, the typical "hype" that might be associated with a collab between Diego Bermudez and the Familia Hartmann might have purely been constrained to the results in the cup - ultra wild lots for the modern speciality experience. But when we consider what the project itself is setting out to achieve - and tasting a coffee like this, with incredibly soft-touch processing - we arrive at something far more nuanced and interesting. A coffee that isn't just a premium lot to be hyped, sold as a flash in the pan - but as an artefact of that larger experimental programme and indeed the hyper-object of the future of coffee itself.

As roasters and coffee buyers, we want to acknowledge the tension between ultra-premium lots like this and a buying philosophy that typically prioritises higher-impact coffees. But that tension only exists if we hold ourselves to a puritanical standard that has never been the scope of Scenery. From the start, our mission has been to buy, roast, and present coffees that we truly love - and we wanted to dabble with something so outside of our typical wheelhouse. Representing an interesting technological and process-driven twist, which is definitely inside our wheelhouse.