PNG Kabiufa

Description

Region : Eastern Highlands
Altitude: 1,750 masl
Process: Washed
Variety : Mixed
Grade : A16+
Q Score: 86.25

Layered and complex. Juicy acidity, blackcurrant, sloe berries, orange, chocolate. Hint of ground pepper on back end. Beautiful coffee.

Unlike many PNG specialty coffee stories, this coffee initiative does not have a long and
rich history. In fact, the Riverside coffee is the result of a very new initiative. A local
entrepreneur in Kabiufa, Moses Venapoe, attended some of our coffee workshops on
best coffee practices. This encouraged him to try start buying coffee with a firm focus on
the best possible quality.
Coffee from the Kabiufa area usually exchanges ownership in random small volumes at
one of the many anonymous ‘roadside scales’ (small parchment buying points). This
coffee ends up in blended untraceable and unremarkable Y grade lots. This is the case
when there is no dedicated local coffee buyer to access and market the regionality of this
coffee, and this was the case in Moses’ community.
In November 2019 Moses decided to try his luck and his skills and fill the void of an
absent dedicated coffee buyer by setting up a buying station for his community in Kabiufa.
He did so by vigorously implementing best post-harvesting and processing practices and
demanding the same from his suppliers from day one! Unlike most coffee buyers in the
area who trade parchment, Moses set up a cherry buying operation and built a small wet
mill in his own back yard to ensure full control of the wet milling, fermentation and drying
of the coffee.
First cherries at the wet mill were purchased late November 2019, in the far end of that
year’s coffee season under the trade name ‘Riverside Coffee’. With high-quality in mind,
Moses organised the buying process in a (for PNG) unique way: significant premiums of
30% above market price are paid immediately to the supplier for a “red cherry only”
delivery. This means cherry is hand-sorted at the wet mill, prior to weighing it and buying
it. The carefully selected ripe cherry gets processed while the unripe cherry is discarded.
This serves both as a deterrent to the delivery of unripe cherries and to encourage better
harvesting at the farm.
Behind the wet mill area, Riverside Coffee has set up raised drying beds on which the
parchment is carefully sun-dried over a period of 7 to 9 days. Any obvious remaining
impurities are removed from the drying beds by hand. This results in immaculate looking
parchment that is brought to NGHCE’s dry mill for processing.