Lang Biang Coffee Community

What is a day in your life like?

Usually if it’s not in the harvest season, they will go find something else to do for additional income while maintaining the farm. 

When the harvest starts,  they and their family will pick cherries together, thus buying cherries from other farmers in order to fulfill their customer’s orders. The cherries are picked during the day then  processed right after in the afternoon. Wet milling and drying areas are right at the farm so they don’t have to go far. The majority of their process is fully washed and anaerobic natural. They also process coffee by customer request and do try a few experimental microlot. 

At about 8 or 9pm during the peak harvest, that is when they go back to their house and rest or sleep at the farm and ready for the next day.

What opportunities are you looking for from people that buy your coffee?

To understand the international market, specific countries like Australia, the U.S and Europe. It helps Tam and Pat understand the challenges and rewards of working in the Specialty coffee industry. Therefore, their skills in processing and storing coffee will be deliberately getting better year after year. 

Where does your passion come from?

To make a living by selling Specialty coffee. To be able to pay pickers a fair price so they can keep coming back every year to help during harvest season. 

What makes this green crop different from others that you have harvested?

It is how they process and ferment the coffee. Usually the anaerobic natural process will be finished once the cherries are fermented for a certain amount of hours without oxygen, but this time we went an extra step in fermenting it a second time after pulping. 

Are you looking to grow relationships with people long term to buy from you?

Yes, Absolutely. We all started producing coffee at some points, without long term buyers, there will be no feedback. And without feedback we would not know where to improve our quality and how to be efficient year in and year out. It also allows predictability for all.

What makes your coffee different from others?

Tâm and Pat harvest the coffee based on the sugar content of the coffee fruit, waiting until the cherries reach a brix level of 23+ (a measurement used to assess fruit ripeness based on sugar concentration). Lang Biang mountain is considered one of many prime locations in growing the best quality cherries in the central highland of Vietnam. 

This last part is up to you, what would you like to share with the people who drink your coffee and feel free to share whatever you would like to tell people we don’t edit any of your answers. We are a platform for you to reach everyone!?
Tam and Pat are located in the rural outskirts of Dalat City. Located in Vietnam’s mountainous Central Highlands. These farmers belong to the highly distinctive K’Ho tribal group. Their agricultural lifestyle, and animist-religion has been connected to these temperate-mountain rainforests, longer than any of Vietnam’s 53 other ethnic groups. They exist at the juncture between Northern and Southern Vietnam. And have maintained one of the most distinct cultures within the country, despite possessing fewer than 150,000 members; as compared to the nearly 80,000,000 members of the majority ethnic group: the Viet people. 

Due to its’ idyllic weather, Vietnam’s prime farming region was established as the favorite summer retreat for Vietnamese royals and French officials. Mercifully, this beautiful landscape at the northern fringes of Southern Vietnam, was able to avoid major conflict during the civil war; except for a repelled Northern invasion during the Tet offensive. As a result, its French Colonial architecture is largely intact. But the same cannot be said of the ancestral lands of the K’Ho, as many people were forced to abandon their lands, and subsequently struggled to regain ownership after  collectivized lands began to be repatriated id….In a process often favoring those belonging to the politically and culturally dominant Viet people. 

Paradoxically, this lack of government favor for tribal peoples; whose independent cultures placed them at the fringes of propriety in a state seeking doctrinal homogeneity; wrought their biggest strength. Given the K’ Ho’s now meager landholdings, they were forced to maximize the value of their crop, by investing greater care and attention into the botanical potential of each bean. This philosophy ran counter to the mainstream, government backed mass-market coffee collectives, whose quantity over quality approach had turned Vietnam into the second largest exporter of coffee in the world. But this emphasis on quality over quantity meshes well with current trends. Market research in the coffee industry has clearly shown that customers’ tastes have become more sophisticated, in a similar way to wine in the latter 20th Century. To that end, we are proud to say that the farmers we are working with, have demonstrated they are able to meet the highest quality standards in the industry.