Good morning and welcome to today’s review! I’m checking out a new coffee from Palma Coffee Co. they call “Jua,” and it’s a peaberry from Tanzania. Thanks for coming along and discovering this coffee with me!
Purchase this coffee directly for $17/12oz.
PALMA COFFEE CO. JUA
Palma Coffee Co. is a fairly new roasting operation that was started by Manuel Montenegro and his wife, Amanda. Manuel is originally from Colombia and feels a deep connection to coffee through his DNA. Amanda and Manuel were first exposed to specialty coffee while on their honeymoon, and their passion for excellent coffee has grown along with their aviation business, which has taken them to parts of the world like Istanbul, Beijing, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Denmark, the UK and all over the USA. Manuel stressed to me that Palma Coffee Co. is a passion project and I think he differentiates that from a business that makes money. I can relate, KC Coffee Geek has only cost me money over the years, but I still love doing it and never intended it to be a money maker, either! This structure allows Manuel and Amanda to be very selective in the coffees they roast and to be a bridge between the consuming countries and the producing countries, where most coffee farmers live below the poverty line. Amanda and Manuel are helped by their friend, Carl, who has an Artisan X-E fluid bed coffee roaster. Fluid bed roasters use hot air to do the roasting… imagine a VERY upgraded popcorn popper! Palma Coffee Co. is currently located in Miami, Florida.
Palma named this morning’s coffee “Jua” and it’s a peaberry from Tanzania. I’ll share my tasting notes first, then get into the details of the coffee so I don’t bias my palate, which is VERY easy to do with even the slightest suggestion of flavors! What little I do know right now about this coffee is that it is a lot of peaberry, which is technically a genetic mutation found in coffee plants that causes only one seed to form inside the cherry instead of two. Have you ever wondered why coffee beans (seeds) have that characteristic shape that’s round on one side and flat on the other? It’s because most coffee cherries have two seeds that grow inside, and they flatten out on the side that presses up against each other in the cherry. Peaberries are by themselves inside the coffee cherry, so they have nothing to press up against. This gives them a round, sometimes oval, shape, and they also tend to be smaller than your average Arabica bean. Traditionally, peaberries were thought to be sweeter than normal coffee beans because everything was going into one seed and not two, but this is not the case. There are still countries that separate out peaberries from other coffees, though, and Tanzania is probably the most well-known of these. It probably varies by cultivar, but it’s estimated that 1-10% of all Arabica coffee is peaberry, so if you inspect some of your coffees you’ll spot the smaller, round beans mixed in with the larger, more characteristically shaped beans, unless it’s from a producer or country where peaberries are separated out.
My Tasting Notes
I used my standard pourover method with this coffee, which is a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water. I use a Trinity Origin dripper, which is a flat-bottom 3-hole dripper like the Kalita Wave, and I use a Kalita 155 filter. My grinder is an Orphan Espresso Lido 3, and I pulse pour my water through a Melodrip to minimize any agitation of the coffee bed during brewing. This coffee got a 30 second bloom and had a total brew time, bloom included, of 3:25.
The aroma from this cup is mostly brown sugar for me, I’m not picking up a lot of fruit or florals. Taking some preliminary sips, like all coffees, this opens up A LOT and the flavors really start coming through around 115-110 degrees F. This is a medium to medium+ bodied coffee for me and it has a nice, heavy presence on my palate, but also a bit of a juicy feel, hitting my cheeks and the sides of my tongue. This is a sweet cup with a light caramel and also a honey tone to the sweetness. This sugary sweetness is quickly followed in the sip by a lot of fruitiness. I’m getting a lot of citrus here, but also a berry note. The berry is not at all like the berries I get in, say, an Ethiopian natural coffee. It’s MAYBE a little raspberry-ish, but more than a specific berry it’s the “feeling” of sweetness and tartness together that is reminding me of the same feel of eating berries like raspberries. In other words, it’s more of a feel coming from this combination of flavors than specific flavor itself. On the citrus side, I am getting something that is like if you smooshed together a tangerine, a lemon and a grapefruit. It’s bright and tart like lemon, and there is definitely a lemon note to the flavor here, but there is also a sweetness that reminds me of tangerine. I’m also getting some grapefruit flavors and a bit of that pithy dryness on my palate. This citrus melange is really nice and it balances all that sweetness very well. Despite that slight sense of dryness, this coffee finishes sweet and at a cool, almost room temperature, there is a lot of dairy sweetness and a real sense of dairy flavors, almost like yogurt, on the aftertaste. That tartness/sweetness is making some weird connections in my brain, I guess! I really enjoy this coffee. It’s super bright, but also super sweet and it’s an interesting cup with some unique flavor notes, to me. Very drinkable, super enjoyable… another nice offering from Palma Coffee!
About the Coffee
As I said, this coffee is a peaberry from Tanzania. Palma’s website says it comes from “family-owned farms” near Mbeya. I’m not savvy on coffee production in Tanzania, but if it’s like a lot of the rest of east Africa, it’s probably the smallholder/co-op model. If this is the case, farms tend to be quite small and so farmers work together in cooperatives to pool their harvest, which is combined into lots from multiple farms. The elevation is 1200-1800masl and this lot is a mix of Bourbon, Typica and Kent cultivars. This is a washed coffee, which is partly responsible for the clean, vibrant flavor notes in this cup. Palma says, “This coffee is balanced, with smooth baker’s chocolate and hints of lemony citrus.” I didn’t get much in the way of chocolate from my cups, but that lemon/tangerine/grapefruit was gorgeous in this coffee! Palma has limited supplies of this coffee, so if bright, citrus-forward coffees are your thing, you should jump on this right away!