Green Coffee Offerings : Indonesia : Papua New Guinea |
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View Our Current Guinean Coffees |
Upcoming Crop CommentsCheck out Tom's travelogue to Papua New Guinea in the Coffee Library. One strange place.... but the trip has strengthened relationships and we hope to see even more great coffees going forward. |
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About Guinean Coffee
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Papua New Guinea is a distinct coffee among the Indonesians, even though it doesn't even have an entire island to call its own. Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern half of the island it shares with the Indonesian provice of Irian Jaya (no organized coffee production originates from Irian Jaya). The small-farm "Coffee Gardens" have a unique wild note in the cup but are in no way as earthy as other Indonesian coffees such as Sumatra and Sulawesi. These small farms are often organized into coops that share wet-milling facilities and are Organic certified. The Plantation coffees are the larger farms and have the cleaner, more delicate and sophisticated cup character. While a lighter body than Javas, good PNG has the delicate notes, complexity, and sometimes the acidity or brightness of the best Central Americans. I have also cupped small farm, natural dry-processed Papua New Guineas and been astounded with the depth, range of flavors and subtleties of the cup: hopefully we will see something of this kind available as a commercial coffee in the US market at some time. Much of the seedstock on Papua New Guinea is planted from the Jamaican Blue Mountain var. typica arabica, and with the Arusha typica varietal from Tanzania. Some are more modern hybrids or the Indian "Kent" varietal. There are several types of PNG coffee I really enjoy: A bright, clean, fruited cup such as Kimel; A balanced lower-toned cup like Arokara Plantation (great for espresso) and a more rustic Organic PNG. In general PNG is such a solid origin, with a range of different cup profiles, as opposed to Timor which has one basic cup profile. So I feel we have good reason to offer multiple PNG coffees (although business-wise it makes little sense, but hey, we don't operate like that anyway!). |
Our Unroasted Papua New Guinea Coffee Offerings:
(You will need to read the reference page to interpret terms and numbers used below). Check out the Sweet Maria's Coffee Home Roasting Forum for more conversation about home roasting this and other coffees.
The Baroida Plantation, located in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, was founded by Ben Colbran in the 1960s. Ben first purchased the land from a native man named Taro and they were amongst the first people to cultivate crops in these valleys. In 1965, the government encouraged the early settlers to start growing coffee as a long-term sustainable crop. Ben started to plant coffee trees becoming one of the first coffee producers of the Eastern Highlands The Colbran Family is now in its third generation with Ben’s son Nichol and grandson Chris running Baroida plantation. Through either luck or good design, the Baroida plantation sits at the apex of the Lamari river valley and Mount Jabarra range. The plantation itself is at about 1700 meters amongst thousands of hectares of cleared land with former colonial coffee estates surrounding them (now run by native landowners) and flanked by mountains (up to 2300 meters) filled with small holder coffee producers. I visited this season, which was a large crop but a difficult one too. All the coffee came in a short time span, and the drying of parchment from the smallholder neighbors that the Colbrans buy from did not seem good, in my opinion. That is why this lot, from their own farm, seemed to have better picking and processing, since it is all done under the control of the estate.
This coffee really jumps out on a table of other PNG coffees from the Western areas for it's sweet aromatics. The dry fragrance has slightly winey, ripe-fruit notes (quince jam, apple, pear). The wet aroma is a little less fruited, with a nice honey-on-toast scent. There are spice notes too; cinnamon and a little nutmeg. The cup is really nice; red apple dominates when the coffee is hot, with the same cinnamon and nutmeg found in the aroma coming through clearly in the sapid flavor. The body is not too thick, but seems syrupy and pleasing. The coffee finishes with sweet mulling spice notes, and a bit of orange peel. Dark roasts can be a little smokey in the roast taste: I prefer City to City+ roast, although the coffee appears a bit uneven and wrinkly in surface texture.
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Archived Reviews
To view reviews for out of stock coffees, visit our New Guinea Coffee Archives.
2005-2006 | 2004 -2003 | 2001-2002 | Pre-2000 Tom's Sample Cupping Log | Moisture Content Readings This page is authored
by Thompson Owen and Sweet Maria's Coffee, Inc. and is not to be
copied or reproduced without permission
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