Single Origin Highlight

Doi Saket is the oldest coffee growing area in Thailand, located in Chiang Mai province. Back in the late 1970’s, the first trees that were part of the opium replacement program of the Thai King were tested here, and have never been replaced by higher-yield cultivars like in many other regions. As a result, heirloom varietals, particularly Typica, are still commonplace in many old farms. The coffee trees are 30-40 years old, older than the farmers! We want to demonstrate to the farmers that there are people who appreciate and are willing to pay more for the heirloom cultivar to compensate for the lower yield. Typica is now rare.

The Lot & Process

This is an experimental lot from Doi Saket in Chiang Mai that Beanspire worked. The owners are a young couple who had quit their white collar jobs in the city to come back to their parents’ coffee farm. Nui is 34 and is an engineer by training, while Aoy is 32 and is an accountant by training.

This coffee is processed differently from the traditional washed method. For this lot, they explored the possibility of creating clean and more complex coffee through an anaerobic process. When the cherries arrived at the mill, they held them in a closed tank for three days before pulping. This is different from the traditional washed method of pulping the cherries as soon as they arrive at the mill. After the pulping was complete, they put the pulped coffee (parchments) back into the closed tank and fermented the coffee for an additional 72 hours before taking the coffee out to wash, soak, clean, and dry on raised beds. This is essentially a ‘double anaerobic’ fermentation process that ends as a fully washed.