Our featured coffee for January is a customer favorite: Papua New Guinea Kunjin. This single origin coffee is our best-selling medium roast, and I personally drink it all the time.
Coffee Production in New Guinea
Coffee in New Guinea is produced mostly on small family farms rather than on large coffee plantations. Families grow coffee on 1–30 hectares of land, along with the crops that they grow for themselves to eat or sell.
The country is made up of many different ethnic groups who live isolated from each other in communities of only a few hundred people. Because of Papua New Guinea’s ethnic diversity and geography, coffee buyers need to be educated about the cultures of the people that they are sourcing coffee from.
There are currently about 280,000 small farms producing and selling coffee throughout Papua New Guinea. The main coffee producing regions are Chivu and the Eastern and Western Highlands. Blue Mountain coffee is the main variety grown in Papua New Guinea, as well as Typica.
The coffee industry in Papua New Guinea has faced many setbacks since the 1980s, including challenges caused by lack of infrastructure in the country, threats of theft from bandits and competition in the global market from other large coffee producing countries like Brazil.
The government of Papua New Guinea has attempted to offset these challenges by providing different incentive programs to coffee growers like subsidized plants to keep farms going and standardization of quality of green coffee beans in the country to help growers meet global coffee standards to therefore, increase their global sales.
Flavor Profile
Papua New Guinea Kunjin features earthy and vegetal notes, typical of coffee grown in Oceania, with a medium body and subtle spice notes.
I enjoy this coffee because it is a well-balanced cup, with all the flavor notes coming together in harmony without overpowering each-other. Papua New Kunjin also has an overarching savory note to it that is rounded out by a mildly sweet finish.
It stands out from other coffees from this growing region that can sometimes have an overpowering note of earthiness and spice. I would recommend this coffee for anyone who has tried an earthy Pacific coffee from Indonesia, that disliked it for being too earthy, having a dirty tasting finish and heavier body.
Check it out this amazing coffee here: https://somscafe.com/product/papua-new-guinea-kunjin-2/
