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Doi Saket - Thailand - Natural


District: Chiang Mai, Thailand
1300 - 1500
Roasting Profile: 
Espresso, Filter, Aeropress, French Press

Thailand isn’t a name that typically pops into your head when thinking about specialty coffee, but we think it’s about time that changed. The country has been producing commodity grade coffe since the 70’s, but there’s been a shift in recent years towards specialty production. This has been driven in large part by a growing local specialty coffee scene and a new generation of young, innovative farmers taking the reins (the average age is 25-35 – Much younger than elsewhere in the world).

Doi Saket is the oldest coffee growing area in Thailand, located in Chiang Mai province. The Typica varitety was planted here as part of a program directed by the King of Thailand to replace the opium crops that had existed previously. As a result, these coffee trees are 30-40 years old (older than most of the farmers!) and have never been replaced by higher-yield cultivars like in many other regions. Typica is now rare as farmers replaced it with higher yield and more rust resistant strands. The region grows coffee from 1000-1500 MASL.

So, Thai specialty coffee is rare. Thai Typica is super rare. Making the most of this requires meticulous processing. First, the ripe cherries were in the morning and processing began right away to avoid unwanted fermentation. Only hand sorted coffee cherries made it through to the processing stage to ensure that only fully ripe ones made it through. After that, the cherries were sampled to make sure that their Brix values are above 20. After hand sorted and sampling, the cherries were floated to remove any defective coffee beans. The cherries were then laid on raised beds in a single layer and minimize the cherries touching each other to ensure even moisture and lack of unwanted fermentation. They were then dried the coffee in a green house in a controlled environment for three weeks carefully monitored each day.