Mystic Melon

About the Coffee

Finca Hartmann is a family farm in the Santa Clara region of Panama, started when Alois Strasil Hartmann first passed through the area in the late 1800s and found land worth staying for. His son Ratibor "Chicho" Hartmann built the farm into a coffee operation over the following decades. Before he passed in 2016, Chicho gave his five children a choice: divide the land and go their separate ways, or keep it intact and work as a team. They chose to keep it together, with each sibling focusing on what they do best.

The farm sits at 1,300 meters, which is on the lower end for specialty coffee. The Hartmanns make up for elevation with variety selection and careful farming. They grow caturra and typica, chosen specifically because they perform well at that altitude. During harvest, the team walks the farm daily, identifying which plots have the most ripe cherry and picking those first. Sorting is strict, with underripe and overripe cherry pulled out before processing begins. Their natural process (where the coffee fruit dries around the bean) starts on raised beds, continues in dark room dehydrators, and finishes in mechanical dryers for larger harvests. That layered approach is what keeps the cup clean.

Phil Robertson, who sources Phil and Sebastian's African coffees and has visited the Hartmann farm, describes it as some of the healthiest coffee trees he's seen. That attention to the plants from the ground up carries through to the cup.

About Phil and Sebastian

Phil Robertson and Sebastian Sztabzyb co-founded Phil and Sebastian in Calgary in 2007. Phil came from an engineering background and applied it directly to the roasting operation, designing their roasting machine and building custom software that runs everything from order fulfillment to coffee menus. Sebastian brought a focus on entrepreneurship and finance, and the two split their sourcing responsibilities by region: Phil travels to Africa to buy green coffee, Sebastian handles Central and South America.

Phil and Sebastian pay well above the industry average for their green coffee and invest directly in projects at origin. The goal isn't just to source good coffee but to keep the producers who grow it in a position to keep doing so. On the roasting side, their standard is set against the best specialty roasters in the world, not just large chains, which means they're constantly re-evaluating their own work rather than treating past quality as a ceiling.

"Phil & Sebastian is a favourite of mine from my time in Calgary. My wife swore by their "Hartmann Honey" beans, and we stocked it (or, maybe "hoarded" is a better word) for as long as they sold it. It feels like a 'full circle' moment to finally have them in our rotation."

- Dean, Director of Coffee