Myanmar Padah Lin

Region: Ywangan, Shan State
Altitude: 1280masl
Variety: Red Catuai
Processing: Washed

Tasting Notes: A clean, straight-up sweet coffee with dominant notes of malted chocolate. The acidity is reminiscent of dried fruit like prune, raisin and date with the second sip revealing subtle flavours of satsuma.

We’re excited to be roasting Padah Lin for the second consecutive year. This coffee comes to us through Indochina importers and is produced by Mandalay Coffee Group (MCG). It’s made up of combined daily lots grown by smallholder farmers in the remote mountainous area of Ywangan, southern Shan state. The farmers belong to the Danu and Pa-O hill tribes and reside across 16 different villages in the area. Within 48 hours of picking they transport their cherries several hours north to the MCG washing station outside of Mandalay where the coffee is processed, dried and prepared for export. 

To produce this washed coffee the workers at the washing station float the cherries in water to separate unripe fruit, strip the fruit from the seeds using a machine called a de-pulper and then leave them to ferment overnight in tiled tanks. After fermentation the beans undergo a final mechanical rinse before drying on concrete patios for seven to 10 days. 

Formed in 2014, MCG works with over 50 smallholder farmers, each of whom cultivates approximately 0.25 to 3 acres of land. Their coffee plants are intercropped with a variety of produce such as avocados, jackfruit, papaya, macadamia and djenkol beans. The different types of trees act to buffer the spread of leaf rust and provide shade for both the coffee and the homes of the families who grow it. Most of the farmers cannot afford fertiliser, but there is a big difference in quality and yield from the wealthier farmers who can use manure from their cattle.

Though coffee was brought to Myanmar by British colonists in the 1800s, coffee didn’t take off until the 1980s after the government encouraged farmers to shift from poppy production to coffee production. The first harvest to hit the specialty market was in 2015 and subsequent harvests generated a lot of buzz and interest due to their high quality. The growth of the specialty market was made possible by USAID, who funded a five-year rural development project focused on improving agricultural value chains in Myanmar. The “Farmer to Farmer” program, delivered by Winrock International, a nonprofit working to increase economic opportunities for the most disadvantaged populations around the world, linked specialty coffee experts from the US with farming communities in Myanmar. 

The first of those experts, Rick Peyser, visited the country in 2013 and the following year he wrote about his experience for Roast Magazine. “At the time, the small-scale farmers I met with were selling their coffee to Chinese buyers who offered a ‘take it or leave it’ price,” Peyser recalls. “They did not seek or pay for quality — they bought all coffee regardless of quality and paid a low price for it. When I met with a group of about 40 or so small-scale farmers, I encouraged them to organize so that they could better negotiate as a group.”

Peyser’s article contributed to the buzz in the market about this “newfound” origin, but it was the rapid improvement in quality and the speed at which producers organised that put Myanmar on the specialty coffee map in record time. Professionals from the Coffee Quality Institute first visited the country in 2015 to provide training. According to a blog post on Algrano’s website written by Luiza Furquim, one of these experts, food scientist and former Q Grader instructor Mario Fernández, remembers “Post-harvest in Myanmar was probably the worst I had seen so far in the world.” The same post quotes another CQI consultant, Marcelo Pereira Magnere, saying, “The volumes were low and the quality was bad. And it was expensive.”

The Myanmar Coffee Association was founded in 2014 with the goal of increasing income for coffee farmers and upgrading their living quality by means of annual increases in productivity and innovation. Since then producers have organised into associations and groups, modern processing facilities have been built and CQI training has meant that Myanmar’s coffee industry is now self-sufficient. According to Winrock, exports grew from a few shipping containers in 2013 to nearly 240 tons, worth $1.5 million, in 2019, the year after their program wrapped up. And despite war breaking out two years later, exports have continued to grow since then.

In 2021 the military staged a coup and took over power from the democratically elected government. Since then there has been widespread fighting between the military and a tenacious youth-fuelled resistance. According to the BBC, tens of thousands of people have been killed, including many children and some 2.5 million have been displaced. The fighting still continues today, some of it in Shan state and Mandalay, where this coffee was produced. In what has been called an act of desperation, in February 2024 the junta announced mandatory conscription for all men 18 and 35 years old and all women 18 and 27. The BBC called the Burmese war the Forgotten War because it’s been overshadowed in the world media by the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. Time reports that the country's economy is in shambles. Half the population is in poverty, inflation is soaring, and one in four people are plagued by food insecurity. 

When we first bought this in 2023 coffee we questioned whether buying coffee from an origin suffering under military rule could be considered ethical. How could we know where the profits from our purchase would go? We could see that Mandalay Coffee Group looked transparent about their business practices. They’re owned by citizens of Myanmar and run by an elected board of directors. Because of the history of specialty coffee in Myanmar they also have strong links to trusted actors in the industry like the Specialty Coffee Association and Coffee Quality Institute. In addition, we were confident in our buying decision because we trusted the judgement of the team at Indochina. As a small importer owned and operated by a husband and wife team they work hard to build relationships with partners committed to the wellbeing of smallholder producers. For more on the politics and ethics of buying coffees from Myanmar, this is a great blog post, again by Luiza Furquim at Algrano. 

When I asked Shirani Gunawardena, cofounder of Indochina, about the economic sustainability of Padah Lin she told me, “We are confident that our direct trade genuinely benefits the farmers we work with – most of whom are from marginalised hill tribes who have switched only recently from opium to coffee as their main cash crop. We believe that specialty coffee can provide sustainable and long-term livelihoods in the region, while the wider benefits of investment in local education and health initiatives will be felt for generations.” She talked specifically about how pre financing smallholder farmers at the start of the harvest, before any cherry has been picked, has a significant positive impact on farmers, given the seasonal nature of an agricultural product like coffee.

Resources:

There’s some nice videos on MCG website - Mandalay Coffee Group – Your source for high-quality Myanmar coffees (mcg.coffee)

This is a great article with interviews with some producers and other folks working in coffee in Myanmar: Who's Behind Myanmar Coffee? - Fresh Cup Magazine

Here’s a fun travel article about the area where this coffee was grown - there’s prehistoric cave paintings there! Ywangan: cave paintings, coffee tours and a white lagoon | Frontier Myanmar

Launching a Specialty Coffee Movement in Myanmar - Winrock International

MYANMAR – SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS FOR MINORITY FARMERS | IndoChina Coffee

The collective initiatives behind the rise of Myanmar specialty coffee | IndoChina Coffee

How GMCR Could Help Revitalize Burma's "Weird" Coffee IndustryDaily Coffee News by Roast Magazine

Winrock volunteer featured in ‘Roast’ magazine for his work with smallholder coffee farmers in Burma - Winrock International

Myanmar Coffee: Get Up to Speed on New Producers and the 2023 Harvest

Is It Ethical to Buy Myanmar Coffee?

This one has a good video: How Myanmar Coffee Got Amazing: The Making of an Origin

Myanmar: Young insurgents changing the course of a forgotten war - BBC News

Myanmar’s Civil War—and What Comes Next, Explained | TIME

A note about packaging

Our coffee comes packaged in beautiful and hard wearing tins. It is important to keep those beans away from air and light (see our blog post about coffee storage) and we think tins are the very best way of keeping those guys fresh. 

Tins can of course be easily recycled (with other metals) but the very best and most environmentally conscious thing to do with them is to refill them. Find out how to refill or dispose of your Steampunk packaging HERE.