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Papua New Guinea

Mong Shade-DriedEducation Lot

$18.75
Notes of Brown Butter, Clementine, Prune
Our first time featuring a coffee from Papua New Guinea, this Education Lot selection features a carefully dried wet process coffee representative of harvests from various producers in the Western Highlands who deliver their coffee to the Mong washing station. We find an intriguing balance of sweet, savory, and earthy aromatics in this coffee, reminiscent of brown butter or roasted winter squash. In the cup, clementine-like acidity and rich milk chocolate are supported by mildly sweet stone fruit flavors similar to prune or dried cherry.
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Lot:

Mong Shade-Dried

It is not uncommon for producers in this region to dry their washed coffees as quickly as possible in full sun, as a way to mitigate the risk of theft and to get coffees to market faster. In contrast, this lot was carefully shade-dried in thin layers with the use of temperature sensors and moisture meters to extend the drying time and amplify quality in the cup.

  • Mong Washing Station
  • Western Highlands, Papua New Guinea
  • Field Blend
  • Wet Process
  • 1850 masl
  • Notes
    Brown Butter, Clementine, Prune
  • February 06, 2025
  • February 13, 2025
  • Release Date
    March 11, 2025
  • Volume
    130 lbs
  • $3.20 /lb
  • $4.79 /lb
  • Experimental Processing, Historical Significance

Highlighting a Historic Growing Region: Papua New Guinea

As is true of most of the world’s coffee-producing countries, the story of coffee's beginnings in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is steeped in the history of European colonialism. The first colonial plantations in PNG were established in the 1800s in coastal areas under British and German influence, who had split control of the island territory between north and south, respectively. While geopolitical control of the Island would change hands in the years following, coffee production continued to grow, most notably with the discovery of the 'interior' Highlands region in the 1930s, including the Western Highlands region, where this coffee comes from.

National Flag of Papua New Guinea

It was around this time, in the late 1920s, that the famed Blue Mountain coffee variety is speculated to have made its way from Jamaica to Papua New Guinea. This Education Lot selection features the Jamaican Blue Mountain variety as well as the varieties Mundo Novo and Caturra, which are both related to the original parent varieties Bourbon and Typica. There are yet other unique varieties associated with Papua New Guinea, such as Arusha, of which there is conflicting information as to its genetic origin. One possible scenario is that Arusha is closely related to the K7 variety developed by Scott Laboratories in Kenya, from where it made its way to Tanzania and, finally, Papua New Guinea.

Crop to Cup, the importer for this lot, has been working in Papua New Guinea for ten years now and continues to maintain a number of projects there in cooperation with smallholder producers and the rare producer cooperative. This lot is an example of one such project, a targeted QC initiative focused on increasing the time and overall quality of washed parchment drying via the use of raised beds, solar driers, and moisture measurement tools. While such practices may seem commonplace compared to the rest of the coffee-growing world, this isn't the case in PNG. Oftentimes, coffees in PNG are dried as quickly as possible to avoid theft and/or simply to rush the coffee to market or to one of the many available middlemen looking to purchase parchment.