Myanmar Coffee Overview

Specialty coffee from Myanmar is still relatively new in the US marketplace.

Our first-hand experience with Myanmar coffee rates the cuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest…. results on par with mild BrazilBrazil is a coffee giant . As Frank Sinatra sang, “they grow an awful lot of coffee in Brazil”.: Brazil is a coffee giant . As Frank Sinatra… coffee, soft acidityAcidity is a positive flavor attribute in coffee, also referred to as brightness or liveliness. It adds a brilliance to the cup, whereas low acid coffees can seem… and most of the cup character being about the roast level. 

Sadly, Myanmar has been under authoritarian rule until recently, and with glimmers of independence and transparencyTransparency is a flavor characterization synonymous with clarity. It is also a business ethics term, implying that as much information as possible about a product is made available…, has lapsed back into uncertainty. There were great civil rights questions looming in relation to the military powers and the ruling elite. One might assume that consuming products from Myanmar might prolong the despotic rule, and in some cases this might be true. We didn’t ask these questions back in 2000 when we had our first Myanmar coffee, which came from Royal coffee if I remember right. I wish we had, because an export good like coffee in 2000 likely came from the military, and funded the military or some form of corruption. 

But this was the same case in TimorTimor-Leste (East Timor) is a tiny island between Australia and Sulawesi, annexed by Indonesia and liberated in a referendum several years ago. Small scale coffee farming was jump-started…, where money from the organicGrown without the use of artificial fertilizers, herbicides, etc.: Organic coffee has been grown according to organic farming techniques, typically without the use of artificial fertilizers. Some farms… coop directly aided the coffee farmers and circumvented the occupying Indonesian powers. Later we had Myanmar from a coop called Golden Triangle, after the coffee regionRegion is a more specific area within the country. Arabica coffee grows roughly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Country of Origin is where… encompassing 3 Asian nations. It was supposedly a USAID project…

Regional Information via Atlas

Mandalay and Shan State produce the majority of the coffee in Myanmar, but recently other regions (Chin State and Kachin State) have also started growing coffee.. In Mandalay, most of the farmers own large estates, and produce washed coffee. Shan State producers are almost exclusively smallholders, most of whom own less than a hectare of land.

Several groups are at the forefront of Myanmar’s specialty coffeeSpecialty coffee was a term devised to mean higher levels of green coffee quality than average “industrial coffee” or “commercial coffee”. At this point, the term is of… movement, including the Mandalay Coffee Group (MCG) (a wet and dry millA facility that accepts dried coffee cherry and mechanically separates the coffee bean from the dried fruit and parchment layer. The facility can be highly mechanized, as in…, export company, and consortium of 50 estates estates in Mandalay), Amayar (a wet and dry mill and exporter in Ywangan owned and operated by Daw Su Su Aung), Shwe Taung Thu (a consortium of 19 villages in Ywangan who produce naturals almost exclusively), and Behind the Leaf (a wet and dry mill and exporter in Pinlaung).