Papua New Guinea Coffee | Kigabah Estate Processing Plant | Washed Bourbon, Typica

Coffee Information

Origin: Papua New Guinea

Variety: Typica, Bourbon

Processing Station: Kigabah Estate

Altitude: 1,520 meters above sea level

Processing Method: Washed

Harvest and Processing Time: 2017

Roast Level: Light

Flavor Notes: Toffee, sweet orange, red berries

Kigabah Estate

Kigabah Estate, a plantation that collaborates with Starbucks, began operations in the 1960s. It went through a period of decline before reviving, and along the way it became a hub for integrating smaller farms across PNG — something like a satellite organizational model. The estate provides local smallholders with guidance on fertilization and cultivation and helps them secure bulk-purchase discounts.

The setup recalls Joe Leahy from the documentary "Black Harvest." A brief look at the wider picture: coffee farmers must obtain organic certification to sign contracts with Starbucks, yet the certification process is extremely complex. Smallholders who already meet organic standards and use no pesticides face difficulties on two fronts — they lack the knowledge and the money to obtain certification, and their remote locations, far from any airport, make sales extremely challenging. In PNG, this estate-based model may be a more viable way to organize coffee farming.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Kigabah's beans are washed — a traditional water-based way of processing coffee cherries. The typical steps are float sorting, depulping, tank fermentation to remove the mucilage, washing or further soaking, then drying and hulling. The long soak triggers chemical changes inside the bean that consume simple sugars (fructose and glucose), lowering the coffee's sugar content while raising its various organic acids. Washed coffees therefore preserve more of the bean's own aromatics while showing bright fruit acidity, cleanliness, and freshness — exactly the profile you taste in Kigabah's toffee, sweet orange, and red berries.

If this washed style appeals to you, two other FrontStreet lots are worth seeking out. The FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Gedingding Cooperative comes from a small village where farmers pool their cherries at a local cooperative processing station; washed processing there draws out jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity, with green tea and honey tones after a medium-light roast — suitable for pour-over, cold brew, or espresso. The FrontStreet Kenya Cherry Tomato shows Kenya's mastery of double washed processing: an extra round of washing, soaking, and rinsing yields an almost juice-like cup of cherry tomato, dark plum, snow pear, black plum, and yellow sugar — sweet-sour and succulent, a long-time favorite among coffee enthusiasts.

And for a classic expression of washed processing at its most balanced, the FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 was born from it: on an island with limited sunshine, removing the skin, pulp, and mucilage before drying shortened drying times and cut the risk of spoilage, producing luminous, low-defect beans with pure hazelnut, cream, chocolate, and caramel notes — balanced, with no single flavor standing out or falling short.