Thailand Robusta Nam Orr

Coffee Profile

Continent: Asia

Country: Thailand

Farm: Kaleb Jordan / Gem Forest Coffee

Process: Semi-washed

Region: Nam Orr, Nan Province

Roast Scale

Light Medium Dark

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Make espresso at home? We’re thrilled to share this - the best robusta in Thailand - with you, our espresso enthusiasts. Our staff has fallen in love with it, and we’re sure you will too! 

Tasting Notes 

Fragrant and flavorful undertones of cranberry, walnuts, red current and lime with a velvety, milk chocolate body.  Makes an excellent low-toned espresso or even a wonderful filter coffee.

Background Info

While most Robusta in Thailand is grown in the south of the country there are small scattered plantings found growing in the North. Like this robusta grown in Nam Orr, Nan province. Robusta has been recently planted in this area and currently there are only a couple of tons being produced. 

This is a single farmer micro lot Robusta produced by Kaleb Jordan, a Thai-born American whose parents have served in Thailand as missionaries. Kaleb was home schooled in Nan province before being sent abroad to study mechanical engineering at Purdue University. During his 3rd year, he had a spiritual calling to come back to the province where he grew up to work with coffee farmers. He began testing various varieties of Arabica and for the last few years have been buying Robusta cherries to process as well.  We've purchased coffees from him for several years now. His arabicas were famed in Thailand, even before he took 1st place in the first ever Thailand cup of excellence competition last year.

Our friends at exporter Beanspire Coffee bought a Colombian made Penagos pulper for him to use a few years ago. Beanspire uses Kaleb's farm as an R&D station and applies processing methods that have proven to work in Kaleb's processing station to other farms elsewhere in Thailand. Kaleb's contribution to the improvement of Thai coffee quality goes far beyond the immediate neighboring farms in Nan where he operates.

For this lot, he applied  a semi-washed process, where the pulped coffee is fermented for 12 hours, with a trace of mucilage on the parchment during drying. In other words, it's a half-way process between a fully washed and a honey. 

Up until recently robusta coffees have had a bad reputation with specialty buyers, who view them as a cheap, commodity grade bean good for little more than instant coffee. And we know why: strip-picking and careless processing is encouraged to keep costs low for the primary buyers, the instant coffee and discount coffee brands. Unsurprisingly, robusta coffee farmers typically earn half or less that of arabica growers.

Paradise Coffee Roasters has been a champion of robusta coffee producers since 2004. And to that effect, Paradise founder Miguel has been supporting and collaborating with robusta growers in India, Ecuador, Vietnam, and Thailand. We believe that if the coffee industry is serious about sustainability and truly cares about coffee producers, we cannot afford to ignore nearly half of the coffee farmers in the world. To us, specialty coffee is not a species, variety, or location. It is a process.

Tips for brewing with Robusta

Robusta is less dense than arabica coffees and behaves a lot differently in brewing. We have some tips from Barista and Brewers cup champion friends in Ecuador for how techniques to get the best out of single origin robustas.

Pour Over by Johann Buenano 2019 Ecuador Brewers Cup Champion

• Use 15g of ground coffee to 200mL hot water (201-203F)
• Pre-wet the grinds with 30ml water.
• After 30 seconds pour the remaining 170g of water all at once.
• Target brew time of 1:30-1:45

Espresso Recipe from 2016 Ecuador Barista Champion Mario Idrovo

• Use 20g+ (if your basket will allow) with 194-196F Water.
• 1:2 Brewing ratio. 20g coffee =40g brewed espresso
• 23 second extraction time.

Robusta produces a lot of crema so the volume can be very deceptive. It will look like it is pouring too fast, but the crema will settle out after brewing.