Papua New Guinea Peaberry Sigri Estate

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Coffee Origins: Western Highlands Province, Indonesia

Coffee Certifications: Shade Grown

Our Papua New Guinea Sigri Estate Kula Peaberry is an exceptional specialty coffee.

All coffee bearing the Sigri name is grown at over 5000 feet elevation. Sigri considers soil and water conservation as a priority, and, the plantation is bird and eco-friendly. The plantation employs a medium density shade strategy, using two types of shade trees. This promotes even ripening of coffee cherries and provides habitat for at least 90 species of birds.

Sigri is a washed Arabica coffee and undergoes a rigorous wet factory process. Quality Control begins in the field; Cherry coffee is hand-picked and carefully checked for uniformity; it must be red and fully ripe which allows for the correct balance of sugar and acid within the cherry. This selected cherry is then pulped on the day of picking.

A fermentation process follows, a period of three days broken every 24 hours by washing – but unlike most other coffees, the Sigri process follows this by total immersion in water for a further day, which creates a superior coffee. Careful conditioning of 21 days is followed by hulling, grading, color sorting and finally hand sorting. This, combined with rigorous quality control before packing, produces one of the best coffees from Papua New Guinea.

All grades are continuously sample-roasted and cupped both at the estate level and by our quality control team in Chicago. This provides a final check on the green bean quality during processing, before shipment, and upon landing at our US warehouses.

Kula Processing Method

The Kula processing method is comprised of raised-bed drying, two rounds of color sorting, and two rounds of hand sorting. This results in a total of six stages of sorting after the parchment has been dried. This process includes destoning, screen size grading, densiometric sorting, double color sorting, and finally double hand sorting. Floaters are also sorted out in two different stages of the wet process. This level of rigorous sorting results in a clean and crisp cup!

Our trademark “Kula” coffees are exclusive to Benchmark and refer to special processing guidelines that are followed specifically for our coffees.  All coffees bearing the “Kula” name are dried on raised beds and go through two rounds of color-sorts and two rounds of hand-sorts. This extra processing creates one of the cleanest PNG coffees being produced today.

Kula is the name of a ceremonial gift exchange in Papua New Guinea. Core elements center around honor and integrity. This ceremony highlights different underlying values in the gift versus the commodity economy. In this way, specialty coffee has distinguished itself from commodity coffee. We value to our people, process, and coffees differently in the new world of specialty coffee. It is our gift to you.

Additional Resources:

www.benchmarkcoffeetraders.com