We care about good coffee
We grow specialty coffee. Yes, but what does "specialty" actually mean? We can assure you it's far more than a label slapped on the front of our branding to sell more beans. Specialty coffee takes work and attention to detail. It takes the willingness to train our farmers and accept only the best. It takes experimentation and a burning desire to continually improve. Coffee in Myanmar is developing rapidly and it is our goal to be at the front of the pack, turning back a new leaf among the Pa-O and discovering the full potential of specialty coffee in Myanmar. We care about the whole process, from seed to cup.
“What strikes me about Behind the Leaf coffee is how consistent they are in producing high quality coffee with great flavor. The surprise and magic happens when you taste the fruity and berry-like notes that come through when you take that first sip. It’s also pretty amazing to know that the team at Behind the Leaf Coffee really takes care of the growers they work with. Keep it up guys!”
Our standards are high
Only Ripe cherries
Specialty coffee requires ripe fruit. It might be easier to pick over- and under-developed cherries all at the same time, but easy is not specialty. We have taught our farmers how to distinguish between coffee ready for harvest and coffee that is not. After hand-picking their fruit, farmers bring it to local buyers we have employed in each village to quality check the harvest. When we come to pick up the coffee, it goes through its third quality check where we weed out the floaters and process only the ripest fruit so that your cup of coffee is the result of the best beans available.
Fresh is best
Ripe cherries are important, but if they sit around for days before being processed, the advantage is lost. We pick up coffee from the 9 villages where our farmers live every day but Sunday and process it all on the same day, even if it means staying up until midnight. Freshness characterizes everything we do.
Start well, end well
We figure if we put this much work into finding the right bean and keeping it fresh, we better carry that quality through all the way to your cup! That's why we meticulously process and roast your coffee. There are so many factors to take into consideration when processing and roasting: weather, moister, type of bean, length and type of drying time, fermentation, and different roasting profiles. It's a carefully crafted science. Each batch has its own character, but you can be sure, it had the same amount of care applied to it as every other batch we ship out!
Training in Coffee Tasting
Once all the picking, sorting, processing, drying, and roasting is done, it's time to taste the fruits of our labors. Coffee tasting is an art and requires certification in order to score coffee officially. Behind the Leaf Coffee has a Q grade certified advisor and a Pre Q certified Pa-O staff member. Coffee tasting for the purpose of scoring is called cupping. Each coffee batch gets a cupping score and a score over 80 is considered specialty coffee. We have been scoring between 85-87 in recent competitions scored by other professionals, which makes us very proud of our farmers, buyers, and staff. Interested in learning more about our certifications and awards? Click here!
