Forgotten Variety: Special Liberia?
The most common coffee varieties used in the coffee industry are Robusta and Arabica. However, there are also some Liberia varieties that are often forgotten by the public and which are often recognized by the boutique coffee industry as having a "bitter, metallic and woody" flavour, making them less valuable.
Recently, a team composed of several Malaysian and German professionals questioned this statement. They thought that under appropriate circumstances, is this variety worth exploring from the sensory point of view? Does this variety have the potential to be popular and even become a substitute for the mainstream variety in terms of flavor quality?
According to these coffee experts and researchers, this is possible.
A few days ago, the first coffee festival dedicated to Liberia was held in Kuching, at the northwest end of Borneo, Malaysia. This is not just an activity to satisfy curiosity, but a Borneo coffee seminar hosted by earthlings coffee seminar, with topics including a variety discussion, cup test, and even a roasted beans competition.
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Before that, the author had never tasted the coffee of Liberia, so he tried this variety with reservations. However, after drinking several samples side by side with geisha and Bourbon on the cup test table, the author believes that this variety is unique, and its flavor combines the flavor of ordinary coffee, such as dark chocolate and lemon, as well as confusing flavor, such as sausage and jackfruit.
Dr. Steffen Schwarz, the German coffee consultant who presided over the cup test, said that the cup test was sorted in the order of sweetness, starting from robusta to arabica and ending with Liberia.
Yes, you are right. According to some people, Liberia is actually sweeter than Arabica. The author became convinced of this after he actually measured all the coffees.
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Forgotten Varieties
Arabica and robusta account for the majority of coffee transactions in the world, and Liberia accounts for less than 1% of them because only a few Asian and African countries grow this variety for commercial beans.
Liberia is considered inferior to robusta, so it has never been concerned by the fine coffee industry. Another problem is that the coffee trees in Liberia are much higher than those in arabica and robusta. A tree can grow to 15 meters. Therefore, it requires more labor to cultivate and harvest.
Dr. Schwarz, however, believes that the breed has been unfairly ignored.
Schwartz says: "I've always been sceptical about the way the coffee industry talks about varieties. There is so much second-hand information that is not based on science ...... When I started in the coffee industry 24 years ago, it intrigued me that almost nothing was known about Liberia, even though it was the third most important species."
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Unique System
Schwarz mentioned that the first thing that Liberia attracted his attention was its root, which was larger than that of arabica and robusta, and the root system could also extend more widely.
Although Robusta is thought to be strong, it actually has a shallow root system and is susceptible to drought, low temperatures, and root diseases. On the other hand, leibiriaza has deeper roots than other coffee trees and can be grown in almost any soil, even peat and clay. So when people say that Robusta is the best variety to combat climate change, they are wrong, because Liberia is stronger.
Even with this knowledge, it took shwarz some time to realize that the flavor potential of this variety may be as developmental as its genetic composition. When shwarz traveled for coffee beans and visited farms around the world, he also encountered many Liberian trees.
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However, only a small amount of the crop is usually grown on each farm and the farmer may not even know it as the Liberian species, calling it instead by its local place name. Dr. Schwartz discovered that Liberia was used to lure coffee berry insects and other pests away from Arabica coffee, acting as a natural pheromone trap. Now Dr. Schwartz became interested in its flavour potential.
Insects don't care about cup test scores, they only care about aroma and sweetness, so seeing this phenomenon, I realized that it might be worth exploring.
Garbage Turns Into Gold
The Liberia tree has been planted in the semi wild environment of Borneo in Malaysia for many years. The ancient literature points out that the leaf rust in Sri Lanka caused serious loss of local coffee in 1892, while the British colonists found Borneo by looking for fertile land to plant coffee. But the coffee there was eventually abandoned, and more profitable crops such as tea, pepper, and rubber were planted, leaving only a small number of Liberia trees.
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When we started looking at boutique coffee, we told local coffee producers to cut down the trees they were planting in Liberia and try to grow Arabica coffee," says seminar promoter Rave sun Kwok. We've been working with different boutique coffee associations. These so-called experts told us that Liberia was disgusting and tasted like rubber."
While attending a course in Bangkok, rave sun Kwok and his business partner Dr. Kenny met with Schwarz and the conversation soon turned to this forgotten coffee variety.
When the two coffee professionals from Malaysia returned home, they collected some semi-wild Liberian. However, these coffees were not processed and roasted by traditional methods such as Arabica and Robusta, but by new methods proposed by Schwarz: methods that take into account the high sugar content of Liberia for fermentation and roasting.
Surprisingly, beans are very good, sweet, and fruity. Unlike Ethiopian coffee or Geisha, they are expressed in different ways. They express exotic Asian fruits, such as jackfruit, local mango and banana, and even durian.
In 2018, the boutique Liberia from Borneo made its debut at the coffee summit in Stuttgart, Germany, and won the quality award for raw coffee beans.
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Vulnerable Varieties In Vulnerable Producing Countries
In the past decades, coffee production in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, China, and other Southeast Asian countries has been an important factor driving the economy, and the income from production and export has generally increased.
After talking with coffee practitioners in Borneo, the author realized that since the global market is full of Arabica coffee, Liberia may provide a feasible opportunity for differentiation.
Liberia is a weak coffee producer, and Malaysia is also a weak coffee producer, so it has become the theme of our first Borneo coffee seminar.
There is an exciting future in Liberia (such as Borneo) near the equator. It doesn't need the high altitude of Arabica coffee, and it can breed in almost any soil.
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