KUCHING: Sarawak’s homegrown coffee needs to have proper grading and branding system before it can enter the global market.
This was pointed out by chairperson of the first ever Borneo Coffee Symposium Dr Kenny Lee today.
Dr Lee said coffee’s aroma and flavour were described differently depending on a country’s cultural uniqueness.
“In Sarawak and the whole of Malaysia, our sensory descriptor for coffee is “kaw” which means thick, rich, bitter or has a strong coffee taste.
“If we market our coffee as good quality coffee by only using the word “kaw”, we may not be able to meet the standards of the global market,” he said during the launch of the symposium at the Kuching Old Courthouse here today.
In comparison, Dr Lee said special coffee could be categorised under numerous flavours such as flora, lime, passion fruit, berries, hazelnut, chocolate, caramel, vanilla, citrus and more.
Many people, he added, did not know that these flavours exist in a cup of coffee.
Sarawak, he stressed, needed to share the same “coffee language” with the other global coffee traders.
“Coffee drinkers now pay more attention to the coffee quality and are interested to know what flavours they can find in the coffee.
Dr Lee, who is also the managing director of Earthlings Coffee Workshop, said a good quality coffee was the result of an unbroken chain from farming, processing, roasting to the brewing standard.
“We need to study which coffee, including Robusta, Arabica or Liberica, suits our environment,” he pointed out.
In a rapidly changing global market, he added, there was a need to understand what the market wanted from a particular coffee product.
Dr Lee believed Borneo coffee could be further “glocalised” by introducing a coffee education system, working with the right coffee experts and getting input and utilising the latest technology.
“With that, I hope through this symposium we can find ways to improve the cultivation of Borneo coffee here,” he said.
