Following my recent visit to the coffee producers of Myanmar I was very struck by the amount of effort being put into different processing methods. It’s something that is familiar to the speciality coffee industry however is quite new for your average consumer.
Monsooned Malabarcoffee doesn’t have the “sex appeal” of the fully traceable, single estate / farm coffees that are so millennial but it does have longevity, and in many ways is probably a coffee classic. Never really in or out of fashion.
As you sip your cup of coffee it's almost impossible to comprehend the amount of work that has gone into processing every bean. In this blog I'm focusing on just one of the vital processes that are necessary to ensure that only the ripest and healthiest beans reach your cup. In November 2016 I visited Northern Sumatra and for a week toured the regions coffee farms and factories. Big factories are amazing to look at. Tons of coffee can been seen at a variety of stages in the processing journey, however on many occasions things are happening so fast that it is difficult to comprehend exactly what is going on.
The first thing to point out is the difference between “aged” coffee and simply “old” coffee. Truly aged coffee is carefully aged, usually for six months to three years, by regularly monitoring and rotating the beans to distribute moisture and even out the aging process between coffee bags. This prevents mould and rot from occurring. Coffee is usually aged at origin, and is often aged at a higher altitude, where the temperature and humidity are more stable than at lower elevations.