Five Senses Coffee Blog

A look at Kongo Coffee

My frustrations with actually getting to Papua New Guinea have all but melted away. I’m back in Goroka after spending an amazingly productive time with Jerry and his team at Kongo Coffee. Yesterday was brilliant – nothing can beat a good old face to face get together.

Kongo Coffee is a company that owns a few small plots of coffee trees, runs a wet mill, a hulling plant, an export arm, a coffee transportation company and a roastery.

I’m full of praise for Kongo Coffee. It is an excellent example of a business that has grown despite the odds (really bad communications infrastructure, bad roads etc). It has grown because it is a business by the people, for the people. Jerry understands how important he has become to the local community and, in many ways, has become more important to the local people in providing services than the inept government administration.

He’s been able to do this by finding a market for coffee that he and his people grow. He knows the coffee is good, he knows he can help his people make it better.

Kongo Coffee

He pays a premium over the standard factory door price being offered by other coffee buyers – on the proviso that they make an effort to meet and maintain a standard. This coffee is called “Elimbari” coffee.

Prices for the pickers

Jerry supervises the post harvest and production really closely. He has employed both an Elimbari Project Officer and an Elimbari Post Harvest Support Officer. He has his own pulping/wet mill and drying racks to get the best possible results in the cup. Interestingly, fermentation times are much longer up here in Chuave (up to 40 hours). At 1,735m above sea level it gets pretty cold, which means that the active bacteria that breaks down the mucilage on the parchment only starts to become active after about 16 hours.

Once washed, the Elimbari coffee is rack dried.

Drying Racks

Jerry stores all the Elimbari parchment coffee and Elimbari green separately to all the other coffee that comes that will, after processing, be sold as Nambayufa A, X and Y Grades.

The same dry mill is used to process all the coffees. This mill is in the middle of a massive expansion program so that Kongo doesn’t have to shut down production to do a major clean every time they want to change from milling Nambayufa to Elimbari. I love the mill. They even use the parchment to fuel the burners that create the hot air that they use to bring all the parchment coffee down to 11% moisture content before they hull.

Once the parchment coffee is dried and hulled, the beans are hand sorted by what feels like a cast of thousands.

Hand sorting the beans

More updates to come.