Coffee Harvest with Zanya in Langbiang. Three intense months of work for farmers and producers in the highlands of Vietnam. From early morning until late at night, 7 days a week. Picking, selecting, processing, drying. For three weeks we were working side by side with our friends at the Zanya processing station in Langbiang, where we are sourcing our Red Honey Arabica coffee. Hands-on coffee work.
The K’Ho ethnic minority from the highlands in Vietnam is growing coffee since generations and produces one of the most flavourful coffees in Vietnam. But how do you produce such fine coffee? How much work is it really and which steps are required to produce ‘Specialty Grade’ Coffee? Welcome behind the Scenes & Beans in the coffee harvest with Zanya in Langbiang.
Cherry picking – When is the coffee ripe and ready to be harvested?
Nine months have passed since the trees started flowering and the cherries slowly started maturing on the branches of the coffee tree. The Arabica harvest season in Vietnam starts from November and lasts until January and is, without a doubt, the toughest work in the supply chain of coffee. For a specialty quality cup of coffee, only the red and fully developed coffee cherries with a high concentration of sugars will be used. An act of patience and literally doing ‘cherry picking’, in order to be rewarded with a higher price for a great pick. Sold as Specialty Grade Coffee, payments to the farmer are up to 4x higher as if they sell to the commercial traders who focus on quantity, rather than quality. (Commercial vs. Specialty Coffee – What’s the difference? Article coming soon)
Coffee is harvested manually in Langbiang. Small holder farms, often the size of about 1/2 a hectar, are owned by the people of the K’Ho Ethnic Minority in the area of Langbiang. ‘The Coffee Tribe’. During the season, men and women spend their days from dawn to dusk on the farm and often come home and help sorting the cherries untill late at night.
Once harvested, the cherries are packed up in 60kg bags at the farm and carried to the procesing station by motorbike. Often times two or three bags are loaded onto the small vehicles and carried down slippery and rocky path ways. You have to truly master your skill on the two-wheeler to be able to do this.
At the processing-station the bags are being weight and bought directly. In Langbiang the farmers and producers are relatives, so it is true family business and the value & income stays within the Tribe. Most of farmers are uncles, aunties and cousins of Lim, the woman in charge, who is in control over purchasing the cherries and evaluating the quality of the pick.
Sorting the cherries
Before the coffee can be processed further it has to be sorted. Only the red & fully ripe cherries provide the delicate sweetness for a great cup of coffee. Throughout this season, nearly 10 tones of coffee cherries were sorted and processed. All by hand. Traditionally, the sorting is done by the women, sitting on small plastic chairs between mountains of coffee. From early morning till late at night – chatting about life – raising, feeding and entertaining the children on the side and cooking the food for the hungry workers as well. Real woman-power! It’s a special energy to be around and you may catch the interest of one of the elderly single ladies as well. Those K’Ho ladies aren’t shy.
Green and unripe coffee cherries are sorted out, packed up and sold to the local trader to eventually become part of a commercial coffee elsewhere. It is an ongoing education process to be able to receive a better pick from the farms. In the first picture below you can see a pile of coffee: half green, half red. This was in 2018 when many farmers still simply stripped down the trees at once to finish the harvest sooner. The other two pictures are taken this past harvest season in December 2020 and you can barely see green cherries anymore. The beauty of progress and increasing understanding of quality. As the pick is better, the farmers payment increases and the volume for Specialty Grade Coffee by the end of the season will be larger too.
Floating and cleaning
The less glamorous aspects of the coffee processing are the most important! After the coffee has been visually sorted, we float the cherries in water to scoop off the so called “floaters”. Floaters are less dense or even defected coffee cherries which would cause off-flavours in the final cup and probably introduce a unpleasent kind of sour or sharp taste, if not roasted very dark. “Floating” is mainly found in Specialty Coffee processing as an exta step. Once the floaters are sepperated the coffee is depulped. The cherry is being removed from the seed to bring it one step closer to our final product – the Red Honey Arabica from Langbiang.
Drying
Once the coffee is de-pulped it’s being spread on raised drying beds immediately which allows the air to circulate and let the coffee dry more evenly compared to drying it on the ground, which is done more commonly. We need to avoid mold and exposure to dirt and dust.
A slimy layer, packed with natural sugars, proteins and aromas, is left on the coffee seeds to ferment slowly in a shade dryed condition. This sugary layer, called ‘the mucilage’, makes the coffee seeds sticky and appear brownish in colour, which has led to the term ‘Honey processing’. Though there is no actual honey involved at any point of the process.
Honey processed coffee takes longer to dry and is more vulnerable to humidity. Therefore the coffee has to be moved three times a day to avoid mold or overfermentation. Giving the coffee its distinct & delicate sweetness and its winey & fruity taste, makes it so desirable and the demand for ‘Honeys’ is growing. By including Honeys into their offer, the processer can potentially make a higher income too. Diversifying the offer is key for producers to satisfy the curious pallets out there and to add their own signature to the green beans. (The article about Natural-, Honey- and Washed Processing coming soon)
Storing coffee in the right conditions
It has been more than two weeks that the coffee has spent on the raised drying beds to reach its desired moisture content. It has been turned about 50 times in total and was carefully observed day-by-day. Now the coffee is scrapped of the nets, which is quite a bit of work as Red Honey’s sticky surface holds on to the beds. Experienced hands scoop the coffee into baskets and the coffee is eventually carried to the climate controlled storage room. It is not the end of the process for our coffee yet and there are few more steps to come, but for now, the coffee is finally in a safe condition and the beds are free for a new batch of freshly harvested coffee-seeds.
Hulling – Removing the dry Parchment
When the green coffee is ordered by a roastery, just like us, it will leave the processing station for good. Two last steps follow. Hulling & Defect-sorting. Until this point the coffee seeds were still in its parchment. The parchment is a papery layer that surrounds the coffee bean and protects the seed from taking on moisture again or any other form of damage. Before roasting, this layer has to be removed. The pictures show how Parchment Coffee goes into the hulling machine and the greens come out on the bottom.
Producing a Specialty Grade Coffee Bean requires visual defect sorting in the end. Broken-, moldy-, or empty shells are sorted out, as they would possibly underdevelop or burn during the roast and create an imbalance and off-flavour in the cup, especially when roasted on a light profile these notes would stand out easily. To avoid off-flavours, good sorting is crucial. Another work intense job, which takes up to three months, after the coffee was harvested, processed and dried.
Our relationship with this coffee
One of many reasons why we work with the Arabica produced by Zanya coffee is the extraordinary hand sorting! We hardly ever find a defected seed in our batches when we do the ‘prior to roast control’ before we load a batch of coffee into our roast machine. A hard to find and highly appreciated quality that lets this coffee compete on an international level. Much love to the Kra Jan Family at Zanya Coffee in Langbiang for this beautiful work!
Producing this outstanding Specialty-Grade Arabica Coffee might be the best way how the people of Langbiang will be able to protect, embrace and preserve their cultural heritage. We love to be a part of this exciting journey during the Coffee Harvest with Zanya in Langbiang and to share this delicious coffee with you.
Thank you for reading about the Coffee Harvest with Zanya in Langbiang.
We have three different interpretations of this wonderful coffee for you to try.
And it is 60% part of our Signature Blend
This is wonderful. The world needs more companies like these that work directly with the local farmers. They know where the product comes from and they know every step and how each step affects the people they employ. That knowledge is so powerful. Everyone benefits! As a teacher I have been researching the topic of fair trade for my primary school students and showing them the importance of knowing where our food and products come from. I was really impressed by how much they grasped and how they wanted to teach others about fair trade. We had a lot of fun learning together. Congratulations on your company and the road you are paving in the coffee world. It is inspiring!
Hello Julia,
thank you so much for your wonderful comment! We love to read from your own experience with your students and are so glad to share the same vision. Educating the next generation of aware consumers will be the only way for a real change. Thank you for being part of this journey and and doing your job with passion and dedication toward sustainablility. We hope to be able to do our part with a fairer and more sustaibable supply chain in coffee, too.