Malaysia Sabah Honey

About This Coffee

DIRECT TRADE, NANO-LOT, ROAST DATE MAY 13th. Aromas of honey, and lemon. Heavy and very sweet in the cup where it reveals flavors of black tea, brown sugar, and chocolate. Malaysia is not a country most people associate with coffee. The have a long history of growing the Robusta and Liberia species, mostly for internal consumption. Arabica however has just begun commercial cultivation in the past 2 decades and is unknown until recently even to Malaysia's local roasters. This coffee comes from the massive island of Borneo of which Malaysia's Sabah province occupies the northern portion. Here sits the impressive Mt. Kinabalu, a popular tourist attraction. In the highlands around this mountain is where arabica can be found. In November 2018 we visited Sabah to see what the potential of this new origin might be with Jack Lee of Sabarica. Support and training from the local department of agriculture has been quite good and what we saw there were well kept farms and decent processing practices. Pulped coffee is fermented with water overnight and then dried on raised screens. Since then quality has steadily improved. Sabarica has built more fermenting and drying infrastructure. This has allowed them to venture into other processing styles such as honey, Natural, anaerobic fermentations. This lot was produced using the honey method (cherries pulped and dried with the sticky fruit still intact) from the farm of Fabian Willem.