Boquete Panama Coffee Estate - Panama Elida Estate Variety Processing Method Flavor Introduction

FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to Elida Estate in Panama

Robert Lamastus founded Elida Estate in the early 20th century. He had been working on the Panama Canal when he heard that Boquete was exceptionally well suited to coffee, and so he bought the land. Today the estate is run by his grandson, Wilford Lamastus, under whose stewardship Elida has become one of Panama's premier estates and a fixture on the final bidding list of "Best of Panama."

Half of the estate lies inside Volcan Baru National Park, making it an ecological conservation zone and home to a wealth of wildlife -- rare mammals such as mountain leopards and long-tailed birds among them -- with biodiversity to match.

Volcan Baru is also one of the tallest volcanoes in Central America, and its slopes hold 7 microclimates across the different elevations. Elida's coffee is grown only up to 1850 meters above sea level -- no Panamanian coffee is cultivated higher. The rainy season is long, running from May to November with annual rainfall of 2400mm, while the sun-abundant stretch extends from late February to early May. Even in the dry season the mountains stay foggy and humid, with comparatively low temperatures and nights that turn downright cold.

The coffee grows year-round beneath pristine, cloud-wrapped forest -- an ideal shaded environment. Trees at Elida take longer than usual to reach harvest after planting, roughly four and a half to five and a half years (two to three years longer than average), and the cool temperatures mean the cherries need an extra month to ripen. All of this feeds into the coffee's distinctive flavor. The estate processes most of its cherries washed, with a small share handled as naturals.

In natural processing, the beans dry inside the fruit pulp, letting the pulp's flavors soak into the bean. For drying, cherries are moved down from the high growing areas to lower, warmer drying fields, where they dry naturally for 10 to 12 days.

Compared with washed coffee, naturals usually show a fuller body, but the hard part is managing fermentation during drying. Elida's natural processing is exceptionally meticulous, yielding coffees with complex flavors, intense fruit, and full-bodied aroma -- and the estate is particularly practiced at applying the method to traditional varieties like Typica and Catuai.

During natural processing, cherries are kept separate by harvest date, so every batch consists of coffee picked and processed on the same day -- about five bags per batch on average. After roughly 10-12 days of low-temperature natural drying, the parchment beans go into warehouses held at 10-12°C for 75-100 days of maturation, and are hulled and hand-sorted only in the week of shipment.

Knowledge Extension

Elida Estate turned in a remarkable performance at the 2018 BOP (Best of Panama), taking three major awards: champion in both the Geisha Natural and Washed categories, plus Estate of the Year. Its Green Top Washed Geisha also broke the estate's own 2016 BOP record, scoring an extraordinary 94.66 (past the 2016 mark of 94.15).

In Summary

FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research center dedicated to sharing coffee knowledge. We hold nothing back, simply to help more people fall in love with coffee -- a mission we have carried for the past six years, alongside three discount coffee events each month so more friends can enjoy the best coffee at the lowest possible prices.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If Elida's high, cool, cloud-forest terroir intrigues you, FrontStreet Coffee's Boquete Washed Geisha is the estate-level entry point we recommend first. Grown at 1600 meters in Boquete's volcanic-ash soils -- where mountain mists keep days humid and nights cool -- it brews into the Geisha signature of jasmine florals with green tea, honey, citrus, and orange. It suits anyone tasting Panamanian specialty coffee for the first time. If you want the Geisha character at a friendlier price, our Panama Washed Butterfly (Huadie) blends half Geisha lineage with Caturra and Catuai, planted on the slopes of Volcan Baru: generous body, bright citrus acidity, and jasmine aroma, excellent both hand-brewed and cold-brewed. For pour-over, use a medium grind with clean water just off the boil and pour gently, letting the jasmine and citrus notes fully open.