What's the Ideal Pour-Over Temperature for Herbazu Black Honey Geisha Coffee? How Many Seconds for Pour-Over Geisha Coffee?

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Costa Rica COE Winner Herbazu Estate Geisha Black Honey Process

A sweet, clean and balanced coffee that is not a typical Geisha yet very easy to enjoy.

Origin: Costa Rica

Region: West Valley

Estate: Herbazu

Variety: Geisha

Altitude: 1500m

Processing: Black Honey Process

Flavor Notes: Citrus, Dried Cranberry, Cocoa, Clean mouthfeel, High sweetness

The owner of Herbazu Estate is the brother of the Pelada farm owner, and their farms sit next to each other. The estate has won COE awards several times and became COE champion in 2015. As a regional leader, he keeps challenging himself, researching and developing cultivation methods, and a few years ago achieved an excellent fourth place in COE. Despite these outstanding results, he never becomes arrogant. Every harvest season when we meet, he always asks about our cupping results for his beans. He continually cultivates new varieties and takes an active part in COE competitions. He inherited his father's character and his grandfather's farm with its excellent soil. In his growing area you can see 27 rows of Geisha trial plots, including mutated orange Geisha, Bourbon varieties and natural mutations of unknown varieties. Every time we visit his farm we do so with great anticipation, and we always learn something new. That diligent and humble approach gives us complete confidence in his beans.

FrontStreet Coffee's Three-Stage Pour-Over Method for Geisha Coffee

Three-Stage Pour-Over Method

Stage-wise extraction, dividing one portion of water into three separate pours.

Suitable for light, medium-light and medium roast coffee beans.

Uses a Kalita wave filter, the cake-style dripper.

Increase the bloom time or the number of pour interruptions to enhance the coffee's richness and intensity.

The Stage-wise Extraction of Three-Stage Pour-Over

Advantages: More layered than single-pour methods, clearly distinguishing the front, middle and back-end flavors of the coffee. The technique involves increasing the water volume after the bloom, typically pouring when the coffee liquid level drops to near the coffee bed surface, using small, medium and large streams for the three-stage extraction.

Disadvantages: Higher demands on control of water flow rate and volume.

FrontStreet Coffee's Recommended Pour-Over Parameters for Geisha Coffee

The cake-style dripper uses immersion extraction, which increases the contact area between the grounds and the water and can improve texture compared with a V60, resulting in a thicker mouthfeel.

Parameters: 15 g of coffee grounds, water temperature 91 to 92 degrees Celsius, grind size BG 5R (China standard 20-mesh screen, 64 percent pass-through rate), water-to-coffee ratio approximately 1:15 to 1:16.

Technique: Bloom with 27 g of water for 30 seconds. Start the timer when brewing begins and pour hot water from the gooseneck kettle in clockwise circles centered in the filter. Pour to 27 g, then stop and wait 30 seconds before the first pour.

First Pour: Pour in circles similar to the bloom, but at a slightly slower speed, increasing speed when you reach the outer edge. Stop pouring around 1:15. Wait for the liquid level to drop by one third, then pour again. The second pour should concentrate in the center, avoiding the area where the coffee grounds meet the filter paper to prevent channeling. End extraction around 2:05. The tail section can be discarded, since the longer the extraction runs the more astringency and roughness it picks up.

Pour Stages: 30g - 125g - 230g

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Herbazu is a good reminder that Geisha does not have to be dramatic to be excellent, and FrontStreet Coffee's Geisha range is arranged so you can taste that range of styles yourself. For a first look at the famous Geisha profile at a friendly price, start with our Panama Boquete Geisha, an entry-level Geisha that still delivers the classic orange-blossom honey character, an oolong tea-like body and fine fruit sweetness with clear layers.

Higher up the range sit FrontStreet Coffee's Esmeralda Estate lots. The Red Label, officially Esmeralda Special, is grown at 1,600 to 1,800 meters, with every lot cupping above 90 points and carrying its own number, and all the beans in a lot coming from a single small plot, such as the Harimiyo plot, so buyers can choose a batch by the subtle flavor differences they prefer. The Green Label, originally Private Collection, is not divided by plot but blended from several, expressing the estate's signature high-altitude Geisha character, and its price is friendlier, which makes it excellent value.

For Geisha from its birthplace, FrontStreet Coffee's Grana Geisha comes from Ethiopia, from a single-variety farm at the border of the Kochere and Gelena Abaya areas of Yirgacheffe. The processing station was founded in 2014 and is run by Mr. Israel Degefa, in a district with as much as 700 hectares of coffee, much of it uncultivated, with fertile soil and plenty of shade trees. Cherries are hand-picked and dried on raised beds for 14 to 20 days depending on the weather, and the medium-light roast shows bright citrus acidity, elegant ginger flower, ripe fruit sweetness and a fine, silky body. If you want an estate-level Ethiopian Geisha, the Geisha Village Gold Label, a Gesha 1931 lot making up 10 percent of the village's production, and the Red Label, a Gori Gesha lot making up 15 percent and scoring 88 or above on the SCA 100-point scale, are both worth seeking out, and FrontStreet Coffee's Strawberry Candy, a Geisha blend with Costa Rican honey-processed coffee, is a fine everyday alternative.