Franz Zeimetz
In Panama City, Franz Zeimetz runs Lost Origin, a coffee project focussing on top end Geishas from Panama’s western highlands. The coffee project has an impressive pedigree, with international awards including the 2024 World Brewer’s Cup, and connections with some of the world’s finest roasters.
Boquete
But Franz isn’t only a coffee nerd. His story starts with beer, becoming a home brewer at a young age before starting Casa Bruja brewing in Panama City. His interest for other high quality food products led him first to coffee, where he hoped to apply his expertise in fermentation. He began to build a network of quality focussed producers in the iconic Boquete region, before eventually gaining permission to experiment with fermenting their prized Geisha cherries. Coffee fermented in Franz’s garage won the prestigious Best of Panama in 2021, and from here he knew he was on to something.
The World Brewer’s Cup
Franz started Lost Origin Coffee Lab in 2023, and has gone from strength to strength since, including a Lost Origin coffee winning the 2024 World Brewer’s Cup in Chicago. Lost Origin’s permanent home is located in a small facility above Casa Bruja, and takes many cues from it’s beer producing big brother. Extreme cleanliness, stainless steel tanks, and high technology are the highlights here.
Novonesis
Another driving force behind Lost Origin’s success are the yeast and bacterial cultures he uses in order to control fermentation, designed and manufactured in Copenhagen by our friends from Novonesis. We have partnered with Novonesis on several coffee fermentation experiments, and have always been impressed by the control and quality potential, while maintaining the origin characteristics of the coffee.
Cacao
The coffee growing region in Panama is small, with only a single harvest season, so the team at Lost Origin needed to find a way to keep their equipment running for more of the year. Cacao has been grown in Panama for centuries, especially in the Bocas del Toro province, close to Boquete but at lower altitude, towards the Caribbean coast and the border with Costa Rica.
Franz and Lost Origin have applied their trademark attention to detail to cacao. Intact cacao pods are trucked to Panama City from Bocas del Toro overnight to ensure the pulp is kept sterile inside the pod, and refrigerated to ensure minimal fermentation.
On arrival at Lost Origin’s lab, the pulp and beans are removed, and the fermentation mass added to one of the stainless steel tanks. Two of Novonesis’ cultures are added. The first is Pichia Kluyveri or PK, a non-saccharomyces yeast often used in non-alcohol and low-alcohol beers, as it opens up complexity and aromatic intensity without creating excess alcohol. The second is Lactobacillus culture, branded as Harvest LB-1. This is often used in sour beers, acidifying the final product without the unpleasant ‘dairy’ flavour. Here, the acidifications helps ‘sterilise’ the fermentation, meaning the PK can outcompete other strains and dominate the fermentation. The LB also adds a bright acidity to the final bar. The mass is then fermented for 5 days in sealed tanks, before drying slowly in Lost Origin’s climate controlled drying rooms.
A unique profile
All of this work leads to one of the most aromatically intense and interesting bars we have yet released, with a bright acidity, intense sweetness, and a character of tropical fruit candy.
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