Fair Trade Certified Papua New Guinea: Featured Origin Select Coffee

Each month I get the pleasure of choosing a new single origin coffee to purchase and roast for our Origin Select project. While we always carry a standard selection of single origins representing some of our favorite growing regions, this gives us the opportunity to highlight some exceptional beans on a seasonal basis that we might otherwise have missed out on!

Kenta Plantation Mill is named after the community and village where it is located, about 4 hours away from Goroka town. The mill is a relatively new addition, built in 2011 and equipped with two four-disc depulpers and newly constructed fermentation tanks, where coffee is fermented for two days or more before being fully washed. The mill is located at 1,600 meters, but the farmers in the area live and grow coffee all the way up to 1,850 meters, some of the highest elevation in the region.

Coffee is delivered in cherry by local producers and is blended with coffee grown on the plantation land. The majority of the coffee in this area is Bourbon, Typica, and Arusha. The coffee is separated into day lots and kept separate throughout the processing and drying. The coffee is depulped the same day it's delivered, and fermented for 48 hours or more before being washed. It is dried on tarpaulins that are spread on a grassy field near the wet mill; it's tended by local women, who rake and rotate the coffee as it dries, over a period of 6–9 days.