LAOS - LA'S JAVA HONEY

Filter Roast

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A BIT ABOUT THIS COFFEE

This is our 2nd release of La’s Java variety for the year, and safe to say it is one we’ve been super excited to share. 

La’s coffee has always stood out to us for its unique flavour profile, carrying the distinct signature sweetness of Laotian coffee that keeps bringing us back to explore the region's hidden gems. 

Her home, Nong Kali, is a peaceful village, a place of lush rolling hills dotted with small coffee plots nestled among natural forests. Red dirt roads, used as much by livestock as vehicles, connect traditional villages that produce some of the best arabica in Laos.

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WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT

This coffee offers a wonderful natural sweetness, layered with citrus and tropical fruit notes, carried by a rounded base of caramel and honey. These flavours intertwine to create a vibrant yet mellow cup, with a silky texture and a smooth, lingering finish.

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HOW TO BREW

V60

20g Dose

300g Yield 

2.45 Brew time 

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THE STORY

La specialises in washed and honey-processed coffees, sundried on raised beds in the scenic outskirts of Nong Kali. She cultivates small plots of Java, Catimor, and Typica varieties, surrounded by native forests, and processes each batch individually. 

This special lot comes from fully ripe Java cherries grown on La's farm. After harvesting, the cherries were floated to remove any defects, then carefully pulped, similar to her washed process. Instead of fermenting to remove the fruit layer (mucilage), as done in a fully washed process, La leaves the sticky-sweet mucilage on the parchment and dries the coffee slowly on raised beds. This traditional honey process brings out a uniquely defined and sweet character that showcases arabica from the Nong Kali region beautifully.

Coffee has been farmed here for more than 60 years, with the majority of farms in the area being small, family-managed coffee gardens which are most often shade-grown and organic. It's a slow pace of life here, and a scenically beautiful one at that.

We’ve been sourcing coffee from Nong Kali since 2020. As with all of our Lao coffees, we purchase dried parchment directly from individual families, enabling them to focus on what they do best: farming and processing the best coffee they can.

This way, farmers don’t have to worry about dry-milling, sorting, bagging, transport or the complexities related to export. They also set their own price and can better account for their total costs.

It’s substantially more involvement and effort for us, but it’s a model that we are proud to say is the most mutually beneficial here. 

Coffee was first brought to the Bolaven plateau a little over a century ago by the French. They introduced Bourbon and Typica varieties (some of these heirlooms can still be found in a handful of villages). The departure of the French and the subsequent Vietnam War completely decimated the industry, and it has slowly recovered over the past couple of decades.

Today, the Plateau is home to a growing industry, including some smaller specialty-focused operations, as the conditions for producing arabica here are perfect. A cooler stable climate with good rainfall, fertile volcanic soil and lots of natural forest cover are some of the conditions in favour of arabica production here. 

The coffee varieties that are mainly grown today are Catimor, Catuai, Caturra, Java, and Typica. Demand for Lao coffee is now at an all-time high.