Services
Processing coffee, building sensory panels, formulating drinks, teaching and developing brands. The work I do for farms, mills and producers.
Coffee processing and fermentation
Four years of special processes: robusta and arabica in Penonomé, catuai in Cerro Azul and Boquete, Geisha under the CryoBloom protocol.
Having worked both extremes —lowland robusta and high-altitude Geisha— is what lets me walk into a farm and see where the problem is.
Sensory analysis and panel design
Sensory training with Cara Technology, in England. BJCP judge at Certified rank since 2018, and more than thirty competitions in ten countries.
Panel and instrument design. Surveys, score sheets and descriptive language, including the work under way to build one for Panamanian honeys.
Quality control consultancy. A panel is only useful once it is calibrated, and calibrating takes standards: everyone smelling the same thing and calling it the same name. That is where the sensory tools come in — attributes, defects, and even the CO₂ that carbonates the drink.
Beverage development
Formulation and development of fermented drinks, infusions and distillates from endemic and emblematic ingredients of the country.
Beverage design consultancy. From what you want to happen in the glass to how you get there: raw material, fermentation, and what gets decided on purpose instead of left to chance.
With yeast chosen, not inherited. I work with Fermentis yeasts —for beer, wine, spirits and coffee— and with my own fermenter and still. That distinction, choosing the fermentation rather than waiting for it, is told in full in The Yeast That Was Already Home.
Training and education
Teaching since 2015. Since 2020, classes at Beer School (Mexico), Costa Rica Beer School, CARAB and the University of Alicante programme, much of it online, for Spanish-speaking students in several countries.
Sensory training workshops
Sensory training workshops in three drinks: coffee, beer and mead.
Every year. Not a one-off format: they run annually.
By level or by family. A workshop can run by level —beginner, intermediate, advanced— or come at it by aroma family: fermentation, with its esters, phenols and contaminations; oxidation; musty and damp. And the line that is hardest to draw: when something is an attribute of the ingredient and when it is a defect.
This format works with reference standards.
Product and brand development
Product development and brand creation for producers: concept, formulation, graphic design and image.
It has already been done for other producers.
To talk about a project, get in touch.