What's the Best Roast Level for Specialty Coffee? Ideal Roast Degree for Colombian Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee's Finca El Paraiso Geisha Roasting Curve Sharing

Finca El Paraiso is a coffee estate that Mr. Diego Samuel began operating in 2008. Back then it was little more than a small family farm of 2.5 hectares, and the owner poured the surplus from each year's harvest back into coffee-agriculture research, continually probing how specialty flavors could be produced even better.

In 2015 he entered a local regional competition for the first time and took first place. The win made his name overnight, earned him recognition across the industry, and spurred him on to keep promoting specialty coffee cultivation.

Through his company Indestec (Innovacion y Desarrollo Tecnologico para la Caficultura), Diego developed new technologies to improve and stabilize coffee quality. He says he likes to step outside his comfort zone, because doing so keeps pushing him forward.

Finca El Paraiso currently grows mainly Bourbon, Laurina, Gesha, and Castillo, and plans to experiment with more varieties.

The variety of this particular lot is Bourbon.

Bourbon belongs to a branch of the Arabica species. It is a variant of early Typica (from before recorded coffee history) that was transplanted to Yemen, its bean shape shifting from slender and pointed to round. In 1715, after France transplanted the round Yemen Mocha beans to Bourbon Island off the east coast of Africa (renamed Reunion Island after the French Revolution), the variety took the island's name. The round Bourbon beans were carried indirectly to Brazil and to Central and South America in 1727, and in 1732 Britain transplanted Yemen Mocha to St. Helena Island, where Napoleon was later imprisoned; those were round Bourbon beans too. Bourbon remains the perennial champion of American specialty coffee cupping.

The green beans show noticeably uneven color and carry a faint fermented aroma alongside a grassy fragrance.

Curve 1

Yellowing point at 5:15, first crack at 9:23, temperature 182.9°C. Removed from the roaster three minutes after first crack at 199.8°C. This is a medium-dark roast with a heavy mouthfeel, featuring chocolate and nut flavors.

Cupping notes: cocoa, caramel, cream, smoky, and citrus, but with poor cleanliness and woody and other off-flavors.

Curve 2

Yellowing point at 5:10, first crack at 9:07, temperature 183.4°C. Removed from the roaster two minutes after first crack at 196.5°C. This roast level is medium-light, preserving more floral aromas and acidity.

Cupping notes: fermented aroma and floral fragrance. When slurped, there are passion fruit, ripe apple, citrus, hazelnut, and caramel flavors.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The two curves above show how much a Geisha lot can change with roast level, and if you want to taste what a carefully handled Geisha can do, start with the entry point: FrontStreet's Panama Boquete Geisha. Grown at roughly 1,600 meters on the fertile volcanic-ash soils of Boquete, it is an estate-level Geisha that delivers the classic Panama profile at a friendly price, with the varietal's signature jasmine florals, green tea, honey, and citrus-orange notes. It is an ideal first taste for anyone curious about the "Geisha flavor" people talk about.

From there you can move up the Emerald Estate ladder. FrontStreet's Emerald Red Label Geisha is picked from a single plot above 1,700 meters, cupping at 91 points or higher, and shows a refined orange-and-honey profile with juicy stone fruit and a tea-like finish; the Green Label (Private Collection) blends several plots to express the estate's signature high-altitude Geisha character and offers outstanding value. For an Ethiopian expression, FrontStreet's Grana Estate Geisha comes from a processing station established in 2014 at the border of the Kocher and Grana Abaya areas, where fully ripe cherries are hand-picked and dried on raised beds for 14 to 20 days depending on the weather; roasted medium-light, it opens with bright citrus acidity, elegant ginger-flower aromatics, and the ripe-fruit sweetness typical of the varietal.

Because Geisha is a floral, fruit-forward variety with a fairly hard texture that can clog the dripper, FrontStreet suggests a medium-fine grind (about 78% pass-through on a Chinese-standard #20 sieve, roughly fine granulated sugar) and a 91°C water temperature. A typical pour-over uses 15 g of coffee, a small Hario V60, and a 1:16 ratio in three stages: a 30-second bloom with 30 g of water, a gentle circling pour to 125 g, then, once the bed has drawn down halfway, a continued pour to 225 g, for a total brew time of about 2:10-2:20.