Pandemic perks café sector, 

Readies new coffee blends 

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, Oct 31 (PIA) – The pandemic and its restrictions to curb the spread of the disease may have sidelined several industry and service sectors, not those in the café business. 

While everyone was in their homes resting, the sector grouped and experimented on ways to come up with different coffee house blends to diversify on their menu offerings when the new normal resumes. 

Bohol Coffee Development Council coordinator and Department of Trade and Industry specialist Blair Panong bared this as he guides the local coffee industry astir in the time when everyone is cooling down. 

And in another novel attempt to prop up the coffee farmers, the DTI and the Bohol Coffee Development Council is matching local coffee shops with coffee growers to make the industry sustain. 

Speaking before the weekly Kapihan sa PIA, Bohol Coffee Development Council coordinator, Panong said the move would assure local coffee shops of sure supply of locally grown coffee beans and also the farmers of a sure market, even for small amounts of their harvest. 

By then, coffee growers and café owners agree on the observance of quality assured processes of good agricultural practices, methods of harvesting and drying the beans and in coffee roasting so the quality of the product is maintained. 

Now responding to the need to come up with a sustainable local market, the council whose vision is seeing the coffee industry here as uplifting the economic status of Boholanos through product quality, production and processing capabilities is also into promoting clean and green environment, as well as consistently meet the volume and quality demand of consumers to the betterment of lives and the industry. 

With the Philippines among the top producers and exporters of coffee in the 1970s, the unstable world market price, the quota restrictions and high cost of production has discouraged the industry. 

As the country consumes more than it produces, it imports around 20,000 to 30,000 metric tons of coffee beans, amounting to millions of pesos annually. 

However, Panong said the government has picked coffee as among the priority industry clusters for development, the plant itself ideal for growing under forest cover and is a sturdy plant that needs less attention. 

Seeing the very good prospect, a Boholano named Duke P. Miñoza has established the province’s largest coffee plantation and is now running the Café Nueva Vida of Buenaventurada Farms. 

With around 407 hectares of land planted to coffee, around 162 hectares of these is grown to the Arabica variety while the remaining 245 is planted to and is the source of the Robusta variety. 

Panong said Food and Drugs Administration is set to give Buenaventurada Farms its License to Operate its coffee processing center, which would allow the farm to go big on their roasted coffee production. 

Arabica beans tend to have a sweeter, softer taste, with tones of sugar, fruit, and berries. Their acidity is higher, with that winey taste that characterizes coffee with excellent acidity, according to thekitchn.com. 

Robusta, on the other hand tends to have a stronger, harsher taste, with a pea-nutty aftertaste, but although said to be inferior kind, it contains twice as much caffeine as Arabica. 

Grown in lower altitudes beans, robustas fruit more quickly than Arabicas, are less vulnerable to pests and changing weather conditions, and some high quality robustas are valued especially in espressos for their deep flavor and good crema. 

Arabicas, on the other hand, need several years to mature, but they yield more crop per tree, but they grow better in higher altitudes, that Bohol has more of the robusta, said Bohols duke of coffee, Duke P. Minoza, during the same Kapihan. (rahchiu/PIA-7/Bohol) 

PERKING UP THE COFFEE INDUSTRY. With the pandemic practically sidelining workers, the coffee industry kept itself astir as DTI and the Coffee Development Council put up trainings on diversifying coffee menu and discovering new blends, to be ready as soon as the new normal resumes, reports Blair Panong at the Kapihan sa PIA. (PIABohol) 

ROBUST. Bohol’s Duke of Coffee, Duke Miñoza explains the difference between two of the most grown coffee varieties: Robusta and Arabica. Bohol is a string robusta producer, and the crop has been perfectly fit to recover portions of Bohol’s idle lots, giving communities and option for livelihood. (PIABohol)