Panama - Lost Origin La Estrella Yeast Inoculation

Lost Origin produced the 2024 World Brewers Cup Champion’s coffee. Composed of relentless explorers consciously challenging prevailing processing norms in the spirit of evolutionary creativity, the Lost Origin team catalyzes cross-disciplinary inquiry between craft beer and artisanal coffee to reach as yet uncharted flavor horizons.

Unconventionally operating in the heart of Panama City, above a craft brewery, Lost Origin’s processing facility stands apart from traditional farms, creating a space where visionary experimentation thrives.

By implementing deeply researched protocols using the highest quality, hand-harvested coffee cherries — such as Café Don Benjie Geisha grown in the optimal terroir of Hacienda Bajo Mono north of Boquete — and utilizing custom fermentation vessels and controlled drying rooms, Lost Origin fastidiously engineers each bean's profile to optimize its cup potential, reaching new levels of coffee excellence and making way for new sensory dimensions.

In this way, Lost Origin’s novel approaches strengthen Panama’s stature in the global specialty coffee scene as a dynamic force that harnesses innovation and tradition in shaping the future of coffee.

Panama Geisha is a rare, delicate, and complex variety well-loved for its sweet florality and citrus highlights. Since its debut win at the Best of Panama auction in 2004, it has kept specialty coffee lovers everywhere captivated by its endless possibilities, delicacy, complexity, and clarity of flavors.

As such, it is often showcased on coffee competition stages by a great number of coffee champions, and it also continues to fetch the highest prices.

While a coffee’s truest intrinsic qualities are still largely believed to be showcased best by traditional washed processing due to the demucilaging, washing, and scrubbing steps removing all traces of fruit from the bean, the expertise of seasoned and passionate producers like Franz Zeimetz & Giovana Boutet allows them to direct the flavor character of the Panama Geisha towards a seemingly endless diversity of delightfully surprising trajectories.

They do this through the purposeful implementation of traditional methods like the natural and honey processes, as well as intentional and innovative processing styles.