A 100g bag pours roughly six cups, which puts a considered morning at a little over the price of a takeaway flat white, made at home in your own time. You are also paying for things that cost us money and are easy to skip: single-origin buying rather than blending, roasting to order rather than to stock.

Long Banga, Sarawak. Honey-processed Liberica. Tangerine, brown sugar, milk chocolate, coconut. If you already drink filter coffee black and notice the difference between origins, yes. If you take it with milk and sugar and want something dependable rather than distinctive, one of the chocolatier origins will suit you better, and we would rather point you there than sell you the wrong bag.

Can I trust what you claim?

By publishing the parts that do not flatter us. This coffee is grown without synthetic inputs and carries no organic certificate, because the estate is too small to fund the annual audit, and we say so on the label rather than implying otherwise. Three of our coffees carry a published laboratory report so far. This lot is not one of them yet, and we would rather leave that space empty than borrow another result.

How long does a bag last?

Roughly six cups from 100g, so a fortnight for one person drinking a cup most mornings, or about a week for two. It is a deliberately small bag. Coffee is at its best in the first weeks after roasting, and we would rather you finished it while it is still worth drinking than kept it going stale.

How should I brew this one?

We would start with filter, v60 or chemex. or immersion, aeropress. Roasted medium, so it is forgiving of a slightly coarse grind and rewards water just off the boil. Whole bean, ground at home if you can, because coffee begins losing its aromatics within minutes of grinding.

What if I do not enjoy it?

Write to us. If the bag is faulty, unfresh, or not what we promised, we replace it or refund it. Taste is personal, so if a coffee simply did not suit you, tell us what you thought and we will point you at the one that will. It helps us think about what to carry next.

Origin 09 Sarawak, Malaysia

Sarawak Liberica Long Banga Honey

RM45 / 100g whole bean

Long Banga, Sarawak. Honey-processed Liberica. Tangerine, brown sugar, milk chocolate, coconut.

Single originRoasted fresh

Roasted to your order. · Posted within two working days.
Shipped worldwide by DHL or FedEx, 3 to 5 days.
Postage RM7 in Peninsular Malaysia, free at RM80 and above. RM12 in East Malaysia and RM20 to Singapore, both free at RM150 and above. Elsewhere, calculated at checkout.

Farm: Long Banga
Varietal: Liberica (Polyhybrid)
Process: Honey
Altitude: 500 m
Roast: Medium
Weight: 100g whole bean
Brew: Filter, V60 or Chemex
Immersion, AeroPress

Prefer a pairing? See the duos and trios →

The cup

Tangerine first, bright without being sharp. Then brown sugar and milk chocolate, the sweetness a honey process leaves on the bean as the fruit dries around it. Coconut sits underneath, in the wide, low register that arabica cannot reach.

The gentler of the two Sarawaks. Give it two mornings. It makes sense by the second.

The story

Long Banga is a village in Sarawak's Marudi District, set beside a small river that gives the place its name. The state capital, Kuching, lies nearly six hundred kilometres west. The cherries grow here at 500 metres, on a scale most maps would miss.

This is the second lot from the same estate. The first, Ragi, was sealed without oxygen before it dried. This one is honey-processed: the skin comes off, the fruit stays on the bean, and the lot dries in the sun with that sweetness still attached. Less ferment, more sweetness, a cleaner line through the cup.

Liberica is Malaysia's heritage coffee. Most of it never reaches a specialty cup. This lot is part of a small effort to change that. To take an overlooked native species and treat it with the care the specialty market reserves for arabica.

The beans

Sarawak Liberica Long Banga Honey. The roasted beans.

Liberica (polyhybrid). Honey. Medium roast.

01Why this one

Why it is on the shelf.

We buy this lot from Long Banga, Sarawak. Grown at 500 m. One farm, one lot, one harvest, bought because the cup earned it and not because it was easy to source.

02Why organic

What it means by the time it reaches you.

Most coffee is grown on a schedule of sprays. Fertiliser, herbicide, fungicide, applied to a plant that fruits in some of the wettest country on earth. It works, and it leaves a farm that needs a little more of it every season.

Organic is the decision not to. Compost in place of synthetic nitrogen, shade canopy in place of a cleared field, three years of it before the word may be used at all. It costs the farmer more and yields less, which is why so little coffee is grown this way.

You taste the consequence rather than the practice. Under shade the cherries ripen slowly and unevenly, so they are picked in passes rather than stripped in one. Nothing was added to the field to carry a thin harvest. What is in the cup, the tree made.

And there is the part that matters at seven in the morning, before anyone has thought about agriculture. You are not wondering. It is the same instinct as turning the olive oil around to read the back, applied to the one thing you drink every single day.

On this coffee

This one is grown exactly that way and carries no certificate. The estate is too small to fund the annual audit, which is a cost question rather than a farming one. Organic by practice is not the same as organic by certificate, and we will not print the word as though it were.

The longer case for organic →

03What we measured

Screened before it is roasted.

A certificate records what a farm agreed not to use. It cannot tell you what is in the bag you are holding. So we send green beans to an independent laboratory and ask that question separately, against 952 pesticide and herbicide residues alongside ochratoxin A and the four aflatoxins.

This lot is in that programme, and its report is not published yet. Three of our eight coffees have theirs online today and the rest follow as each batch clears. We would rather show you an empty space here than borrow someone else's result.

Mycotoxins are the reason this is a separate question at all. They form after harvest, in humid transit and storage, which is a stage no farming certificate covers.

All published results → What we test for, and why →

Before you buy

The questions we would ask.

Is it worth RM45?: A 100g bag pours roughly six cups, which puts a considered morning at a little over the price of a takeaway flat white, made at home in your own time. You are also paying for things that cost us money and are easy to skip: single-origin buying rather than blending, roasting to order rather than to stock.
Is this one for me?: Long Banga, Sarawak. Honey-processed Liberica. Tangerine, brown sugar, milk chocolate, coconut. If you already drink filter coffee black and notice the difference between origins, yes. If you take it with milk and sugar and want something dependable rather than distinctive, one of the chocolatier origins will suit you better, and we would rather point you there than sell you the wrong bag.
Can I trust what you claim?: By publishing the parts that do not flatter us. This coffee is grown without synthetic inputs and carries no organic certificate, because the estate is too small to fund the annual audit, and we say so on the label rather than implying otherwise. Three of our coffees carry a published laboratory report so far. This lot is not one of them yet, and we would rather leave that space empty than borrow another result.
How long does a bag last?: Roughly six cups from 100g, so a fortnight for one person drinking a cup most mornings, or about a week for two. It is a deliberately small bag. Coffee is at its best in the first weeks after roasting, and we would rather you finished it while it is still worth drinking than kept it going stale.
How should I brew this one?: We would start with filter, v60 or chemex. or immersion, aeropress. Roasted medium, so it is forgiving of a slightly coarse grind and rewards water just off the boil. Whole bean, ground at home if you can, because coffee begins losing its aromatics within minutes of grinding.
What if I do not enjoy it?: Write to us. If the bag is faulty, unfresh, or not what we promised, we replace it or refund it. Taste is personal, so if a coffee simply did not suit you, tell us what you thought and we will point you at the one that will. It helps us think about what to carry next.

Everything else we get asked → Our standard, in full →

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