Papua New Guinea Coffee Overview

PNG Coffee Culture

The culture in PNG, still very tribal in most ways, and seems to dictate the values of the people more than economic gain. There are still frequent inter-tribal skirmishes, and given that within a one hour drive, you might have passed through the lands of 2 or 3 ethnic groups who don’t even speak the same root language (and might have a history of conflict too), it is difficult to organize farmers here and to build trust or get cooperation.

With the big money from multinationals floating around, everything is lopsided. For example, a hotel room in the modest capital of Port Moresby might set you back $600 to $800. And in a small interior town, which might cost $30 USD a night in Indonesia, could be $300 in PNG.

Aside from small-holder farmers who will often sell their coffee cherryOriginally coffee literature referred to the fruit of the tree as a “berry” but in time it became a cherry. It is of course neither. Nor is the… to a wet-mill, there are large plantations in PNG. The coffee growing side of the businesses was dominated by the Carpenter Family, who also had vast tea growing lands. They had the well-known Sigri farm as well as some smaller ones. Lately the operation seems to have been sold to a multi-national company. Other coffees known in the US are basically brands, not farms. Kimel is a large farm that also buys from surround growers and sells it under the same name.

Some of the seedstock on Papua New Guinea is from the Jamaican Blue Mountain variety of Typica, with the Arusha Typica varietal from Tanzania. Some are more modern hybrids or the Indian “Kent” varietal. There is also a lot of classic BourbonA coffee cultivar; a cross between Typica and Bourbon, originally grown in Brazil: Mundo Novo is a commercial coffee cultivar; a natural hybrid between “Sumatra” and Red Bourbon,… coffee too. The main problems in PNG come with poor coffee processingThe removal of the cherry and parchment from the coffee seed.: Coffee is either wet-processed (also called washed or wet-milled) or dry-processed (also called wild, natural or natural… and poor dry-milling. I visited one of the major dry mills in Goroka and they had cranked up their mechanical dryers to get coffee shipped as quick as possible. This created quite a bit of smoke in the process, tainting their stock of green coffeeGreen coffee refers to the processed seed of the coffee tree fruit. Coffee is a flowering shrub that produces fruit. The seeds of the fruit are processed, roasted,… in jute bags. Indeed everything we cupped tasted smoked.

In small mills, the mixing of unripe coffee cherryEither a flavor in the coffee, or referring to the fruit of the coffee tree, which somewhat resembles a red cherry.: Either a flavor in the coffee, or… with ripe coffee cherry is common. Coffee is treated as it is in the commodity trade, without separating different qualities. Much of the processing equipment is old British type as found in KenyaKenya is the East African powerhouse of the coffee world. Both in the cup, and the way they run their trade, everything is topnotch.: Kenya is the East…; McKinnon and John Gordon, great old stuff that can still produce great coffee. They use disc pulpers and grade the coffee for size on the spot, and some farms even use the Kenya two stage fermentationFermentation in coffee processing traditionally referred to the stage in wet-processing of the coffee. We now understand that fermentation happens more broadly in nearly all processes, including honey… method. But you might often see the coffee dried poorly, laid out on plastic sheets when the patios or drying beds are full, and then soaked when the rains come. This coffee has such great potential, and in the hands of those who know how to work with the environment, the results can be stellar when everything is done right.