PAPUA NEW GUINEA – 12oz

Paul fondly considers Papua New Guinea the perfect single origin coffee, but it also carries some deeply sentimental significance for him. As an upstart coffee roaster in the early 1990’s, his first “perfect roast” was in fact a batch of New Guinea. He remembers it well. While he roasted this batch, he began to fully understand the importance of communicating with the coffee.  He became acutely aware of the signals and clues the coffee was giving him. Even as the finished roast danced in the spinning arms of the cooling tray, it was communicating. When the batch of New Guinea was tasted among the other production roasts arranged on the cupping table, Paul’s colleagues all agreed it tasted extraordinary. He had finally achieved the ever elusive perfect roast. Mr. Peet was the first to speak up. “What did you do to this coffee?” he asked. Paul nervously shifted his feet, surprised to be singled out in a tasting room full of veteran coffee roasters and world renowned coffee cuppers. A wave of panic washed over him. He searched for the technical answer he thought Mr. Peet wanted to hear, regaling the specific heat and air-flow adjustments he had made or other details about the mechanics of the roast curve. He wanted to answer truthfully, that the coffee had communicated symbiotically with him. Instead, he froze. He struggled to spit out a nervous stutter, enticing laughter from the Senior Roasters in the room. A merciful end to the long painful silence came as Alfred Peet nodded towards Paul like a proud father declaring, “Perhaps the coffee speaks for him.” Paul has been listening to coffee ever since.