🇨🇴 Circasia Galaxy Hops Mossto Gesha

Edwin Noreña is one of a handful of Colombian producers treating fermentation as a controllable variable rather than a step to get through. This lot is the clearest example of that on our roster, and probably the most divisive coffee we sell.

What was done to it

The cherry goes through carbonic maceration twice, sealed in a tank flooded with CO₂, where fermentation runs without oxygen and produces a different set of acids and esters than an open-air ferment would. Between those two stages it’s dosed with mossto: the concentrated juice pressed from coffee mucilage, in this case infused with Galaxy hops.

Galaxy is a bright, tropical Australian hop variety usually pointed at pale ales. Its oils are wildly aromatic and, it turns out, survive coffee fermentation intact. The result is dried as a honey process, with mucilage still on the seed.

What it tastes like

Recognisably hoppy on the nose: resinous, a little dank, closer to a hazy IPA than anything you’d expect from a coffee bag. Underneath that, the Gesha is still doing Gesha things: jasmine, bergamot, a tea-like body that never gets heavy. The finish is stone fruit and something distinctly white-wine.

If you dislike hop character in beer you will dislike this coffee. That’s not a flaw in the lot. It’s a strong flavour someone deliberately put there.

How we roast it

Very light, and cautiously. Gesha’s cell structure is fragile and this one arrives already carrying a large load of fermentation-derived aromatics that heat destroys easily. We drop it not long after first crack with development held near the bottom of our usual band. That’s enough to finish the starch conversion and not enough to start building roast character that would compete with what the ferment already gave it.

Push it darker and the hop notes go muddy and vegetal. We know because we tried.

Brewing it

Filter only. Espresso concentrates the fermentation notes past the point of pleasure for most people. A V60 at 1:16 and 94 °C is the safest starting point. If the aromatics feel overwhelming, go coarser rather than cooler. Under-extraction makes the ferment sharper, not softer.