Sarawak Liberica comes from Long Banga, a small settlement near the Kalimantan border, reached from Miri by small plane. The trees are Libex, a hybrid of Liberica and excelsa, grown at around 500 metres. Our first lot from the estate, Ragi, was sealed for thirty-six hours of anaerobic fermentation and then dried as a honey. The cup ran to manuka honey and a florality that is hard to name. The lot we roast today, Long Banga Honey, is honey-processed from the same estate.
Almost nothing about that sentence is convenient. That is part of why the coffee exists at all.
Getting there
Long Banga sits on the Sarawak side of the border with Kalimantan. There is no practical road. It is reached from Miri by small plane, on a schedule that answers to weather rather than to a timetable.
The estate is a few hectares, at around 500 metres above sea level. Everything that leaves it leaves the same way it arrived, which sets a natural ceiling on how much coffee can ever come out of the place. Scarcity here is geography, not marketing. Where Liberica is sold, and how to recognise a single estate lot.
Five hundred metres is low for arabica and high for Liberica. Liberica is a lowland species by habit, comfortable in heat that arabica cannot survive, and it is rarely grown this far up. The effect is the familiar one at a smaller scale: cooler nights, slower ripening, a denser seed. We would not overstate it. Five hundred metres is not two thousand, and altitude is one variable among several. What altitude does to a coffee.
Libex, which is not quite a cultivar
The trees are Libex, a hybrid of Liberica and excelsa, and our earlier Ragi lot came from the same estate. The genetics are not stable. One tree does not reliably give the same cup as the tree standing next to it.
In most agriculture that would be a defect. Uniformity is the whole point of a named cultivar. For a coffee sold by the lot rather than by the tonne, the variation reads differently. It is part of why the cup resists a tidy description, and part of why we are slow to print a fixed tasting note and treat the matter as settled.
Thirty-six hours sealed
For the Ragi lot, the cherries were picked ripe and sealed in oxygen-free containers for thirty-six hours before pulping. Fermentation carries on without oxygen, which shifts which microbes are active and which acids and aromatic compounds they leave behind. Then the cherries were pulped and dried with the mucilage still on the bean, which is what honey processing means.
Anaerobic fermentation and honey drying are both amplifiers. Run either one carelessly and you get a muddled, boozy coffee that tastes of the process instead of the place. Run both, on a hybrid with unstable genetics, and the margin for error narrows further. Washed, natural and honey, compared.
The cup, and the ten minutes
In the Ragi, manuka honey first. Then a florality that is persistent and slightly strange, and does not resolve into anything you can easily name. Jasmine is close and wrong. It sits over a body heavier than any arabica you are likely to have drunk this week. Long Banga Honey, the lot on the shelf today, is gentler: tangerine, brown sugar and milk chocolate, with coconut underneath.
It changes as it cools. We give it ten minutes after pouring before tasting critically, because the cup at ninety seconds and the cup at twelve minutes are not making the same argument.
A starting point that works: 1:15, water at 92 °C, a step coarser than your filter default, around four minutes of contact on a V60. If it turns muddy, you have over-extracted. Coarsen and pull the temperature back.
This is not a coffee that flatters a first impression. It rewards a week of repeat brewing, which is an awkward thing to say about a 100g bag that pours about six cups.
What we can and cannot certify
The estate grows without synthetic inputs. It is not certified organic, because certification costs money and years that a few hectares at Long Banga cannot justify, and we would rather write that sentence than imply a certificate we do not hold. Why we no longer say organic by practice.
Where we screen a coffee, the green beans go to independent laboratories accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 before roasting, for ochratoxin A, aflatoxins and pesticide residues, and the report is published on that coffee's page. Long Banga Honey has not been screened and is not scheduled to be; its page says so. The full standard is written down.
The Ragi lot described here has sold through. Sarawak Liberica Long Banga Honey comes from the same estate, honey-processed without the sealed fermentation, and is the gentler of the two. The case for Liberica, in long form.
The short answers
Where does Sarawak Liberica come from?
Long Banga, a small settlement near the Sarawak border with Kalimantan, reached from Miri by small plane. The estate is a few hectares, at around 500 metres.
What is Ragi coffee?
Our earlier lot from the Long Banga estate, now sold through. The trees are Libex, a hybrid of Liberica and excelsa with unstable genetics, so individual trees vary. In specialty coffee that variation is treated as character rather than as a fault.
What does Sarawak Liberica taste like?
The Ragi lot ran to manuka honey, a persistent florality that is difficult to place, and a body heavier than arabica. The current lot, Long Banga Honey, gives tangerine, brown sugar and milk chocolate, with coconut underneath. Both change noticeably as they cool, so it is worth waiting ten minutes before judging either.
What is anaerobic honey processing?
The cherries are sealed in oxygen-free containers for thirty-six hours, then pulped and dried with the sticky mucilage still on the bean. It amplifies aromatics and sweetness, and punishes carelessness.
Is it organic?
No, and we do not call it that. The estate grows without synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers but is too small to carry the cost of certification, and the word organic is reserved for certified food, so we state the practice plainly rather than borrow the word.
