Thailand – Wiang Pa Pao

Wiang Pa Pao Fully Washed is made up of coffee from 20 small holders in the Wiang Pa Pao district of Chiang Rai, Thailand. This coffee represents what an emerging origin like Thailand has to offer. Expect clean, caramel sweetness, mild lemon acidity and a good body that is sure to be a workhorse for your roaster and café as an exciting SO coffee or part of a blend!

The coffee industry in Thailand started out as an opium eradication project launched by the former King of Thailand. Compared to Myanmar and Laos, Thailand is much more successful in this endeavor. Most farmers (in fact much of the whole coffee industry) we work with are young, with an average age of 25-35 years old. This young movement is a result of the fact that our country is much more developed than most coffee origins. It is very easy to get to coffee farms in Thailand. In Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, which are two of the largest coffee producing provinces in Thailand, you can get to a farm in 45 mins from the airport. Thailand has a coffee system that works, relatively to other origins. Children of farmers are coming back to farms. There is also a vibrant local specialty and coffee culture that helps support the farmers at an acceptable price. It is a good success story for using coffee as an agent of change and sustainability.

This coffee went through a 12-24 hrs wet fermentation, depending on the weather. The pulped coffee was when soaked in fresh water for 12 more hours, then cleaned to completely remove the mucilage. After that, they dried their coffee on bamboo raised beds and greenhouses for 15-20 days.  In terms of green preparation, the coffee went through a destoner, huller, size grader, density table and ended with handsorting. The green passed through the density table multiple times. We shipped coffee in a triple layered bag, which includes a cotton bag in the outer layer, High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) in the middle layer and Grain Pro in the innermost layer.