Myanmar Shwe Yi Mon | Anaerobic Natural SL28

Largely influenced by top Costa Rican growers and the America funded program, USAID, specialty growing in Myanmar began when the Myanmar government was promoting a crop substitution program, removing poppy seed (used to produce black market drugs) to grow a safer crop, coffee. They brought in Costa Rican coffee growers to help educate their famers on how to plant, grow, harvest, and process this new crop. When they arrived to Myanmar, they brought some seeds from Costa Rica, some native and some foreign to Costa Rica. Since Costa Rica had an extensive variety of seeds you’ll find many different varietals grown in Myanmar - SL’s, Catuai, Catimor, etc. Years later, USAID began to help promote coffees grown in Myanmar. In doing so, they (we, tax funded) built a multi-million dollar wet and drying facility in Mandalay. This mill/facility has many different functions. Not only it does serve as an immaculate processing mill, but also to help grade the farmers coffees, provide training programs, and host meetings to help promote their crop. 

This coffee however, was grown at just one farm, the Shwe Yi Mon Estate, which was founded by the same person who founded the Mandalay Coffee Group leading the charge on processing coffees like the washed Ywangan, also found on our menu! 

The Shwe Yi Mon Estate is in Say Ta Lone Village, Pyin Oo Lwin Township, in the Mandalay Region. At this estate, there are several experiments with different spacing between shade trees species, fertilization, 3 solar dryer domes and drip irrigation system. The estate owner, U Ye Myint was born in Mandalay and graduated with a degree in M.SC, Botany in 1993. He has experience in agriculture for over 20 years and is the founder of Myanmar Coffee Association and Mandalay Coffee Group. The estate produces mostly natural-dry process and very little washed coffee. For this lot, fully ripe cherries are harvested and sent to the receiving area to remove floaters. Desired cherries are then sent to the solar domes to be turned hourly on raised beds. After 18-21 days of drying, the desired moisture level of 12% will have been reached.

This coffee is full of dark berries, almost syrupy in the cup, but also somewhat silky in mouthfeel, not feeling too heavy. We get notes of super sweet loganberry, some notes of mulled wine or aged port wine, and sweet caramel. It’s a super rich cup, but somehow still very sessionable and approachable in its balance of flavors and texture.