Papua New Guinea Kuta Peaberry

This coffee comes from Kuta coffee mill, in the Waghi Valley region of Papua New Guinea. The mill buys from small holder farmers nestled along the Kuta ridge, near Mount Hagen, where altitudes reach upwards of 1600 meters above sea level. This is a wet processed coffee, meaning the coffee cherry and much of the fruit are stripped from the seed using depulping machinery, then submerged in water tanks where it ferments overnight, breaking down the remaining outer layer of fruit. The physical grade of this coffee is impressive, and like our other other Papua New Guinea lot, I couldn't find a single full quaker bean in the few hundred grams of coffee I roasted. This is a peaberry selection, meaning it consists of only the small, round beans, separated during dry milling on large vibrating tables. Peaberries occur in about 3% of every coffee tree's yield and are a result of one seed embryo dying, the cherry only forming a single, round-shaped seed instead of two. They are thought to often be denser, therefore, capable of producing higher level of sugar caramelization during roasting. I'm not sure this is always true, but this lot is no doubt very sweet and marked by fruited grace notes.