Cupping the coffees in the region

“Training the Trainer” courses also helped educate more baristas and coffee producers in all the member countries. And from two years ago, cupping sessions for various ASEAN origins have been held at both shows, encouraging better coffee, especially from small farms or producers.

Training the Trainers led by Justin Metcalf

This year ACF will be holding a coffee auction at the Café Asia event in March at Marina Bay Sands Singapore. Specialty coffees will be sold in limited quantities at premium prices to encourage ASEAN farmers to keep improving their produce.

Symposia and other conference-type events are planned to be held continuously to educate more coffee practitioners. Education about coffees from the region (touted to be the next frontier of coffee) is the main mission of ACF.

ACF is a registered non-profit organization domiciled in Singapore, where its President Victor Mah heads the Singapore Coffee Association (SCA). It is supported by its members which are the primary industry (coffee) organizations in the ten ASEAN member states.

“We must promote ASEAN coffees which are on a par with and sometimes even better than those from faraway places,” says one ACF director.

It was a question that Victor Mah, President of the ASEAN Coffee Federation (ACF), posed to everyone at ACF’s 2nd Board Meeting. He particularly mentioned Philippines, Myanmar, and Vietnam because the three countries can boast of their centuries-old tradition of growing and consuming coffee.

In the Philippines, coffee has a history as rich as its flavor. In the 1800s, Barako commanded five times the price of other Asian coffee beans as we became the fourth largest exporter.

Today, Filipino coffee consumption far outweighs production. Vietnam produces thousands of metric tons that are enough to supply the global demand while Myanmar was recently hailed as Asia’s newest origin of specialty coffee. Fortunately, there are still various places in the Philippines where coffee has gone through the proper process from seed to cup. The constant challenge is how to make coffee production sustainable which will also make it profitable.

The Ultimate Coffee Guide‘s articles unravels the Philippines’ coffee journey as we discover more about where we are and where our coffee culture is headed.

Photos by Ros Juan and PCBI