Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey
Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey
Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey
Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey
Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey
Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey
Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey
Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey
Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey
Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey

Costa Rica - Don Kazu, Hacienda Copey

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jack fruit, red grapes, tamarind, sweet chocolate

Weight 250 grams
Roast Profile Filter
Grind Size Whole Beans

Producer: Hacienda Copey
Farm: Finca Hacienda Copey
Location: San Jose, Tarrazu District
Variety: Red Catuai
Process: Thermal Anaerobic
Altitude: 1,860 – 2,020 masl

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A two-peat 1st Place Winner of the Costa Rica Cup of Excellence, Hacienda Copey in the Tarrazu coffee-growing region embodies the fruitful integration of a Costa Rican agri-enterprise and a Japanese electronics manufacturer, both mutually driven and passionate in their pursuit of the best cup. Their terroirs’ Geisha have made the top-ranking lots since 2017.

Most known as a maker of amusement equipment, Japan’s Daito Giken saw an opportunity to take advantage of their manufacturing expertise by developing a coffee brewing machine in 2015. During the development, they realized that no matter how capable a device is, it is ultimately an inherently great-quality coffee that is essential is to brew the best cup.

While touring various farms across Central America, including in Panama, the Daito Giken team came across Hacienda Copey, then already reputed for its Cup of Excellence track record. The terroir’s beneficial conditions — including fertile soils, favorable temperature differences, and an overall distinctive micro-climate and biodiverse ecosystem — convinced Daito Giken that they had finally found their farm.

Since becoming the owner of Hacienda Copey, Daito Giken has formed a 20-strong team of dedicated workers, including seasoned plantation managers from renowned estates in Panama, and seasonally welcome experienced pickers, also from Panama, to carry out their stringent quality-focused protocol at harvest season.

They embrace innovation by pro-actively challenging their established beliefs and practices through purposeful and systematic trial-and-error, in their commitment to continuously improve their capability to produce the best cups of coffee, guided by the virtue of kodawari, the Japanese word conveying unwavering dedication in aiming for perfection, whatever endeavor one undertakes.

The Catuai began to be widely planted by coffee farmers across Costa Rica due to its proven prospects for higher yields compared to the indigenous varieties Typica and Bourbon, while delivering on the potential for good cup quality — as had been observed in earlier adopters like Guatemala and Honduras — following its introduction to the local agricultural landscape in the 1980s. Coinciding with the building momentum of the Green Revolution, which promoted an agroforestry mindset and its accompanying environment-friendly practices, Costa Rica-grown Catuai (alongside Caturra) grew in regard as a reliable and sensorially satisfactory crop.

Catuai is a cultivar with Brazilian origins, having been developed by the Instituto Agronomico (IAC) in Sao Paulo, by cross breeding the exceptionally productive Mundo Novo and the usefully compact Caturra. The relevance at the farm-level is that more Catuai trees can be grown in a given area because of their small stature, allowing the plants to be placed nearer to each other, for example compared to Typica and Bourbon.

Their shape and height also make it physically easier to apply necessary treatments to the plants in the off-season, and at harvest season, to hand-select the properly ripe cherries, contributing to less tedious and more efficient work for the pickers.

At Hacienda Copey, yellow-fruited and red-fruited Catuai thrive owing to conservation-oriented cultivation practices carried out by a dedicated maintenance team, whose critical tasks include manual weed control using machetes, shade adjustment, pruning, and soil condition checks, among others.

A commitment to ripeness underpins every harvest season at Hacienda Copey. It is fulfilled through a multi-prong approach involving farm managers’ hands-on supervision and guidance of the pickers, sorting and re-sorting by hand at different stages prior to the fermentation phase, and cherry ripeness-status classification, which allows for incentivizing pickers accordingly. As a further safeguard for quality, the cherries are additionally sorted by flotation, and also using a siphon machine.

Before proceeding to the processing proper, in the case of Catuai, Red and Yellow cherries are segregated for more specific direction of the processing technique, with the intention to uncover and convey the flavor characteristics specific to each, ensuring that the resultant coffee clearly reflects variety and terroir.

For instance, to direct the Don Kazu Red Catuai Micro-lot’s character toward intense tropicality with crisp highlights and a rich, chocolatey undertone, a Thermal Anaerobic process was implemented. It entailed an eight-day anaerobic fermentation phase in Grainpro bags kept in the relatively warm environment of the green house, during which the cherries were stirred within the bags thrice daily.

The 27-day drying phase that followed was implemented in two stages. First was outdoors on raised beds, at the end of which visible traces of moisture were skimmed off the coffee. For the next and final stage to conclude drying, the whole cherries were moved into a green house, where they were spread out in thin layers on raised beds. In both stages of the drying phase, a dedicated team diligently monitored and regularly shifted the coffees until the desired parameters were met.

brewing guide

- Ready your brewing tools ahead.
- Keep your coffee gear and containers clean.
- Decide and adjust your grind size based on:
— Your coffee’s roast date
— Your brewing method
- Be consistent with water quality and measuring weight, ratios, and time.
- Remember!
— Let your palate help you personalize the best recipe for you.
— Brew often and have fun!

More about Brewing here.

FOR FILTER

  • COFFEE-TO-WATER RATIO: 1:15
  • COFFEE GRIND SIZE: Medium fine
  • (like table salt; 21-28 clicks in Comandante MK4 and 14-18 clicks in Timemore C2)
  • COFFEE AGE: 7-14 days, ideally
  • COFFEE DOSE: 17 grams
  • WATER WEIGHT: 255 mL
  • WATER TEMPERATURE: 90°C-93°C
  • TARGET BREW TIME: 02:30 - 03:00

1. Heat water to 90°C-93°C

2. Arrange your brewing set-up.

— Place your dripper on the carafe & filter paper in the dripper.

— Rinse the filter paper with hot water & remove the rinsing water from the carafe.

3. Switch on your scale.

4. Measure out 17 g of coffee & grind to Medium Fine.

5. Place the carafe and dripper with the rinsed filter paper onto the scale, & tare.

6. Transfer the ground coffee to the dripper; then, tare.

7. Start the timer!

First pour to bloom, 55ml for 30 seconds.

Second pour, 100 ml at 00:30.

Third pour, the final 100ml at 01:15

8. Target to finish the brew within 02:30 to 03:00 minutes.

9. Serve & enjoy!