Pacamara Coffee Bean Flavor Description & Taste Characteristics | Why Pacamara Coffee Beans Are Expensive

About the Pacamara Variety

Pacamara rose to worldwide fame at the 2004 Cup of Excellence (COE) and went on to win championships repeatedly over the following two or three years. A Pacamara from Los Volcanes Estate in Guatemala set a record price of $80.2 per pound of green beans in 2008.

The variety's origin and name: it is derived from the elephant bean, Maragogype, and another variety, Pacas. Take the first four letters of Maragogype and combine them with Pacas, and you get Pacamara: an excellent variety developed in El Salvador. The beans are very large, similar to elephant beans, at about 21-22 mesh, and it has been the best coffee variety in Central and South America in recent years. Every country and farm hopes to find the ideal spot to grow it and produce the finest coffee, much as Panama did with Geisha. Pacamara is characterized by bright fruit acidity and a very pure, delicate sweetness, even though its appearance still strongly resembles that of its cousin, the elephant bean.

Since 2006, the COE has cupped Pacamara from 30 estates. Some of these flavors are true superstars: the 2006 Honduras champion Santa Martha, the 2007 El Salvador third-place Cerro Negro (Black Mountain Estate), the regular COE champion estate El Injerto from Guatemala, and the 2008 El Salvador runner-up Pacamara Estate. They are all outstanding representatives of Pacamara, but every one is an award-winning lot, so the prices are very high.

Pacamara has a full, rich and complex flavor. Few coffee varieties combine fruit acidity with such distinct sweetness, offering a diverse range of notes that includes drupes, vanilla, tropical fruits, chocolate and spice sweetness.

Pacamara Coffee Bean Brand Recommendation

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted Guatemala Pacamara beans offer full guarantees in both brand and quality. More importantly, they are outstanding value: a half-pound (227g) package costs only about 118 RMB. At 15g of coffee per cup, one package makes 15 cups, or about 7 RMB each. Compared with coffee shops selling a cup for dozens of RMB, this is a deeply conscientious recommendation.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If Pacamara's combination of fruit acidity and delicate sweetness appeals to you, FrontStreet Coffee's Geisha lineup explores much the same territory at a range of price points. For a gentle introduction, FrontStreet Panama Boquete Geisha is an entry-level Geisha that lets you taste the classic Panamanian orange-blossom and honey sweetness, with an oolong-tea mouthfeel, fine fruit acidity and clear layering, at a fair price.

For the flagship experience, FrontStreet Esmeralda Red Label Geisha is grown at 1,600-1,800 meters, with every lot cupping above 90 points and carrying its own lot number, each drawn from a single small plot. FrontStreet Esmeralda Green Label Geisha, by contrast, blends several plots to express the estate's signature high-altitude Geisha profile at a more accessible price. From Ethiopia, FrontStreet Geisha Village Gold Label is the Geisha 1931 variety, about 10% of the village's total output, and FrontStreet Geisha Village Red Label is the Gori Gesha variety, a single-terroir series with fully traceable lot information; both are refined, naturally processed and complex.