A Thread 🧵 about Coffee, Photography (and a bit tourism): Checking out Fine&Speciality Canephora/Robusta in Vietnam. A small travellog...
I was lucky enough to have been around when one of the importers of my friends Roastery came to visit, and they had planned a trip to visit Zanya, Great Cherry and Future Coffee Farm (Mr Toi) in Vietnam -- and asked if I´d like to join. Hell yeah!
These are some of the farms that work on making robusta so great that coffee can withstand climate-change.
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The reason is that, it is generally strongly suspected that Arabica won´t withstand a lot of the climate change effects and associated pests. So ... Canephora has a lot bigger chance. "Fine Robusta" or even higher-scoring lots have only appeared in the recent time though - and while we now have very clean Robusta, its taste profile is universally "nuts, rum, raisin, chocolate", with no fruitiness or acidity, which is a bit boring to many enthusiasts.
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So what some farms, the most well-known among them probably Mr. Tois "Future Coffee Farm" are doing now, is putting experimentation and research into making fine high-scoring Robusta even better and more interesting. The details ... still elude me - but in a few days I´ll know (and have tasted) more - and will share! 🤤
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Ok for the moment this is more of a foodporn thing 😅.
Cute little newly opened neighborhood cafe, whose very nice owner I got to chat with about robust a, life, and Vietnamese foods. Great "mild specialty" drinks, very sweet and dense, yet super delicious.
She also had great tips for Com Tam in Saigon, in a small shop also loved by taxi drivers, which was very fluffy rice-wise, yet still defined, chewy and very singled-grains - and the ribs super meaty deliciously marinaded and grilled.
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Later, charcoal grilled ... Everything. Bone marrow and ribs had so much charcoal aroma, and were on point 👌.
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Soul coffee in Buon ma Thout, who have their own processing facility. I had a Robusta which totally blew me away. Roasted almost 16min well into 2nd crack it had an absolute amazing sparkly acidity like dragon fruit or starfruit, with a great peach or stonefruit sweetness. I'm sold 🤩.
Now on to GreatCherry!
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Coffee co-grown with pepper just at the side of the street
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Small family farms with just a little coffee behind their houses drying "natural" in their front yards ...
(As seen from the car)
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Even visually you can tell, left is conventional, right is ecological lots.
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This farm, the land was apparently owned and managed by the states military, which meant we had military people escorting us and explaining their crop management and methods. They were nice enough, but it felt a bit weird :D.
While the maincrop is already over, there are still a few ripe cherries here and there - they´re super sweet, and I got lucky and found a peaberry ^_^
[#]coffee #origin #vietnam
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They are also experimenting with certified organic farming, and this road was on the border between conventional left and organic right. You can even see how much greener, with grass and herbs, the right side is. The grass also reduces the need for irrigation, which I learnt Robusta also often has - it needs much less water than Arabica, but it has a shallower root system. Even some wild peanuts grow, and there´s more and higher shadow-and-windbreak-trees!
[#]coffee #robusta #vietnam #origin
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Another fact that was new to me is that especially in this region, is how many small farms just have a few bushes behind their home, little enough to just dry it in the front yard (natural process), and then agents come by now and then to buy the beans. This is good and bad at the same time, since most often they can grow great coffee, but are no processing specialists. So they only manage to sell at market price for commodity, even though with good processing it could have been a better lot.
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(also rural Vietnam is like expected, with the cows just passing by and loudly moo-ing against the lorry passing too close -- right in front of the restaurant)
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The processing ("producer") facility of Great Cherry. They buy the fresh cherries from small farmers (like the ones in the frontyard-drying-pic, but fresh) or bigger farmers like the military owned land, and then apply their considerable processing knowledge, thereby increasing profit for the farmers by ~30-50%, and making some amazing coffee.
Here we see the wet mill part, with transporters, sorter, floating (to remove spoilt) and a honey process crusher.
[#]coffee #processing #origin #vietnam
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Also, I got to swim in patio-drying commodity! :D
The commercial/commodity coffee looks quite horrible though. It has big chunks of mold (white and green!), lots of impurities (some of which will be removed), and is generally rather eewww-y. It´s made up from the green rejects from the speciality coffee to a big part - which is still high quality coffee.
This, dear #coffee lovers, is what´s in instant and/or cheap store coffee bags.
[#]vietnam #coffee #origin
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I also took some serious #photography and made a really quick edit run on the laptop. It´s not very cleanly edited, but ... it´s something!
[#]coffee #photo #trip #origin #vietnam #robusta #greatcherry #foto #fotobubble #fotographie #photographie
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👆 🧵
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