The come-on is the free coffee, but Coffee Origins has always been about more than that. Since 2002, coffee aficionados have been looking forward to this multi-day coffee festival every October. Originally named Coffee Break, it is the brainchild of the Philippine Coffee Board Inc. (PCBI) led by founding trustee and current director Guillermo “Bill”… Read More
We were at a coffee workshop where farmers brought samples of their roasted coffee. One sticker said “instant coffee.” I looked for the farmer who owned this coffee sample and explained to him the difference between instant or soluble and “roast and ground” coffee. To go back to basics, instant means coffee that’s ready to… Read More
A Gettyburg education study says, “A large portion of our days is spent at work; in fact, the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime.” That’s around 1/3 of a person’s life! With most companies becoming more aware of their personal needs, a lot has been done to make work life… Read More
The brew, however, is not likely to lead to another violence that has made the island province a “no man’s land” for many Filipinos, particularly those from Luzon and the Visayas. With a little help from Kumala S. Elardo, a Sulu princess and chair of the Gender and Development Program of the PCBI, Basilan is… Read More
Ingredients: 3 ounces dark chocolate 1/4 cup water 1/2 cup strong coffee (hot) 4 tbsp sugar a pinch of salt 3 1/2 cups milk 1/2 cup cream a dash of cinnamon powder 1 cinnamon stick Procedure: Melt dark chocolate in a double boiler. Add water and blend well. Add coffee, sugar, and salt. Heat milk… Read More
If you’ve a free half hour at the least, brew yourself a cup of coffee and sit down with Roberto S. Francisco’s A Coffee Journal. Richly informative and deeply personal, this beautiful book tells the evocative, dramatic story of Philippine coffee in a way that’s never been done before. According to Andrew Defrancesco, the pages… Read More
The Filipinos love their coffee, and Philippine coffee is rich in taste, variety, culture, and history. Down south of the country, in the Sulu archipelago, the Tausug people enjoy their home-grown signature coffee, the Kahawa Sug. The Tausug coffee culture was known to have started as early as the mid-1800s, when robusta coffee beans were… Read More
“It would have cost me 60,000 pesos or more, but I got it all for free,” says Jennifer Rimando, now a Q grader for Arabica beans, after attending the Q grader course, sponsored by ACDI/VOCA, PCBI, and Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) in 2016 and 2017. Jennifer was one of those who took the intensive course… Read More
Silca Coffee Roasting Company has been a byword in the local coffee industry since the company was founded in Silang, Cavite, in 1975 by husband and wife Enrile and Evelyn Asuncion. “My parents owned rural banks in Silang at the time, and I saw that many farmers were borrowing money for fertilizer, so there was… Read More