Papua New Guinea - Tambul

One of the nicest Papua New Guinean coffees we’ve ever tasted

Buttery Notes of Amber Honey and Dried Cherry

Tambul Tasting Notes

This coffee has generous amounts of brown sugar, amber honey, and molasses sweetness beautifully balanced by bright red fruit acidity. Juicy notes of red grape, plum, raspberry, and cherry mingle with the sweet notes to create the impression of dried fruit. Features a butteryness throughout and finishes with lingering tones of mallow and warm herbaceous spices.

About The Producer

This coffee was grown by small-holder farmers in the Nebilyer Valley - a fertile, high-elevation area in the western highlands, near Mount Hagen, the country’s third-largest city. Known for its rural trade, Mount Hagen serves as a bustling marketplace and hub for the region. The coffee landscape features a mix of large estates and smallholders on ancestral or leased land.

The Leahy family, pioneers of the modern era in the Nebilyer and Waghi valleys, made initial contact with local tribes in 1933. They built an airstrip that later became a key street in Mount Hagen. Over generations, the Leahy family has developed a coffee infrastructure that supports both smallholders and larger estate owners through seedling distribution, organic fertilizers, processing, storage, milling, and exporting via their Kuta mill, promoting coffee as a cash crop and a stable alternative to subsistence farming.

This coffee is sourced from family-owned farms in the Tambul-Nebilyer District, west of Mount Hagen, where producers cultivate coffee on plots ranging from 1 to 60 hectares. During harvest, cherries are collected and brought to the wet mill for inspection and weighing. They are then mechanically depulped and fermented underwater for 36 hours, followed by washing and drying on tarpaulins under the sun.

Like Kenya, PNG employs conditioning silos for freshly dried parchment, allowing moisture to equilibrate and enhance shelf stability. We think this coffee tastes remarkably similar to a fine quality Kenyan coffee

How To Brew 

We recommend starting with a stronger 1:14 brew ratio. We find that a coarser grind and higher brew ratio makes especially delicious cups of this coffee.

Producers
Smallholder farmers organized around the Kuta mill

Varieties
Bourbon and Typica

Processing Method
Washed and Sun-Dried

Altitude
4300'

Roast
Light