Papua New Guinea Kindeng

Roast: Medium
Region: Waghi Valley
Farm: Collection of small family farms, often called “coffee gardens”
Process: Washed
Altitude: 1,500-1,800m
Variety: Blue Mountain, Arusha
Cup: Banana Puddin’, Pumpkin Ale, Spice Cake

Cupping Notes

The picture-perfect coffee for fall!

This coffee is a true standout! While Papua New Guinea has struggled as an origin to produce excellent coffee (mainly due to lack of infrastructure), this Jamaican transplant is delightful.

Why do I call it a “Jamaican transplant”?

Well, this crop is a mix of both Jamaica Blue Mountain and Arusha varieties. The famed Jamaica Blue Mountain variety is an extremely sought-after species of coffee. If you need a parallel coffee for comparison, think of Kona coffee from Hawaii. Similar to coffee from Kona, it is a world-famous coffee (perhaps rightly so) that is marketed heavily to visiting tourists. Personally, I have visited Jamaica, and you will find “Jamaica Blue Mountain” labels on over-roasted, oily coffees in every gift shop. Ultimately, marketing schemes have made these coffees a gimmick— you can find the cheapest versions of “Kona” and “Blue Mountain” on any grocery store shelf. These commodity (large scale) coffees are poor examples of what these coffees should be and are relying on name recognition to carry them.

However, I fully stand by the idea that these coffees are household names and cult favorites for a reason. But when these “household name” coffees are genuine and are grown purposefully as a specialty coffee, they become world-class coffees.

This is Peregrine’s first Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, and it’s grown all the way across the world in an impoverished Papua New Guinea of all places. For this reason and because it is a sought-after variety of coffee, we have chosen to offer it as an exotic coffee.

Now, what does this coffee taste like? Here’s what we’re tasting:

Banana Puddin’. Like any good folks from barbecue country, Stephen and I have dreams of good-ol’ Texas-style banana pudding. To emphasize exactly which style of banana pudding I’m talking about, I’ve taken creative liberties to use “puddin’” instead. If you know, you know. We’re talking about the one with Nilla Wafers on top. The one where a sweet old lady named “LuAnn” serves you up a big ol’ scoop, pats you on the head, and calls you “child”. That banana pudding! Like a Texas banana puddin,’ this coffee has a delightful, creamy mouthfeel—all tied together with a note reminiscent of fresh banana slices.

Pumpkin Ale. Now, this may remind us of the fall season most of all. I’m imagining evenings spent on the patio of a brewery, somewhere here in Colorado, drinking a crisp pumpkin ale. This coffee has the perfect amount of maltiness with a hint of pumpkin. Pumpkin is a weird note to describe, and truthfully, we got a little lucky to have this coffee during “pumpkin season.” However, somewhere in the neighborhood of nutty & sweet potato-ey, you get pumpkin.

Spice Cake. We’re not sure if everyone grew up eating spice cake in the fall, but we did. If you’re unfamiliar, an old-fashioned spice cake is traditionally a brown sugar-based cake, flavored by cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves. It’s topped with a rich, cream cheese frosting. Think of fall flavors, and you may accidentally conjure up exactly what spice cake is. This coffee is teeming with spice-like notes of cinnamon and nutmeg. The creaminess in the body, paired with sweetness, reminded us of the cream cheese frosting. Simply delicious!

Farming Notes

Papua New Guinea makes up one half of the world’s second largest island. Within its borders are people belonging to 1,000 distinct ethnic groups. Having known many who grew up in PNG (as it is often called) in missionary families, we have heard time and again how lush, beautiful, but extremely undeveloped the land is. A lack of infrastructure and other third-world conditions have often represented an insurmountable barrier for getting the coffee from PNG to market.

For a detailed look into this coffee’s origin, I’d like to turn it over to our friends at Mercon Specialty. Their work on-the-ground and at-origin makes what we do possible, especially in a place as rural and undeveloped as Papua New Guinea.

“The [coffee] is grown in the Waghi Valley of Papua New Guinea, bordering the Anglimp and Kindeng districts. This area has been known as the “food bowl of PNG” for thousands of years. In the shadow of an extinct volcano and running alongside a large river called the Wara Tuman, the earth here is extremely fertile and creates exceptional coffee.

Coffee in this area is mostly Arusha and Blue Mountain varieties and grows between 1,530 and 1,830 meters above sea level. Most coffee farmers in Papua New Guinea have less than a hectare of land and operate “coffee gardens” with only a few trees. The family all take part in the harvesting and the ripe cherries are then sold to the Kindeng Wet Mill for processing.

[The coffee] is named after the region [it] comes from and is grown by the Kindeng Smallholder Farmer Network. They have been delivering exceptional coffee for more than 10 years. Additionally, the group works through community organizing to adopt new technologies to improve coffee quality, reduce environmental impact, and implement integrated pest management.”

Like coffees from neighboring Indonesia, the upper-echelon of coffees are truly exceptional, but there is also plenty of room for error with frequent defects that are extremely common. However, after inspection of this Papuan coffee, we immediately recognized the care taken by those processing it in Papua New Guinea.

We hope you’ll join us in enjoying a remarkable variety of coffee grown in an unlikely remarkable area of the world.

Thanks, as always, to Emily Smith and the Mercon Specialty team.

Papua New Guinea Kindeng

At Peregrine, we only source and roast coffee that pleasantly surprises. We invite you to slow down and enjoy our coffee to create meaningful memories with those you love.

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