La Huaca means treasure. The plot sits around 1600 mdpl on the slopes of Piedra de Candela, and the great majority of it is planted to Catuai. Only the highest sections were given over to Gesha, in small lots, and this is one of them. That is worth sitting with. La Huaca is not a Gesha farm with some Catuai on the margins. It is a Catuai farm that reserved its best air for a few rows of something else.
Hacienda Barbara belongs to the Rogers family and runs on the agronomy of Hunter Tedman, who is as responsible as anyone for the direction Panamanian processing has taken in the last decade. At Beneficio Bajareque he built the fermentation programme around selected yeast rather than ambient culture, which is to say the microbial population in the tank is chosen instead of inherited. Across three farms — Hacienda Barbara, Las Brujas and Piedra Candela — that gives the house a consistency that ambient ferment cannot reach.
This lot is washed, and that is the interesting part. A yeast programme is usually deployed to build fruit. Run under a washed protocol it does something quieter, tightening structure and cleaning the middle rather than adding flavour on top. What arrives is a Gesha that has been sharpened rather than dressed. La Huaca took second at Best of Panama in 2018, and it has never behaved like the junior plot in the Barbara stable.
Rose leads, dry and high, more petal than perfume. Strawberry sits directly underneath and gives the rose something to stand on. Mandarin orange lifts the middle and carries the acidity. Lemongrass runs green through the finish and holds it clean for a long time after the swallow.
Every batch we release is roasted on the Stronghold S7X, a three-stage heat system that gives us direct control over how each coffee develops.
Consistency doesn't mean making every coffee taste the same — it means making sure every coffee tastes like it should. Just good coffee, roasted with purpose.
Fresh off the roaster isn't the same as ready to brew. We let every batch rest so the CO2 built up during roasting can settle — skip that step and you get a flat, uneven cup no matter how good the beans are.
We hold each release for a resting period before it ships, so what lands on your doorstep is at its best, not just its freshest.
The right grind and ratio bring out what this bean does best. Check our brew guides for dialed-in recipes across V60, immersion, and espresso — or just start with our house ratio and adjust from there.