Sống Động Liberica/Excelsa CM Natural

This is Sống Động - a rare and experimental lot from the team at Lộc Rừng Coffee, sourced just this year from a new partnership in Vietnam. We snagged a bag of this small batch, because as soon as you taste it, you get why it doesn’t make sense for these beans to sit around: this one tumbles through the unexpected.

It comes from cherries grown on relatively high ground for these species - a blend of Coffea liberica and Coffea dewevrei (Excelsa), two seldom used species that together represent under 1% of global coffee production.   That altitude, combined with careful farming, sets the stage for a surprisingly dense and complex bean character, something beyond the usual Arabica profile - with a mouthfeel and sweetness totally different. 

For processing, they went whole-hog on an extended 20 day carbonic maceration: cherries fermented in a CO₂ rich, oxygen starved environment before drying slowly on shaded beds over approximately 30 days.  The result is a cup profile that takes that classic liberica/excelsa profile, but boosted up with much more acidity and fruit flavours than others. You can expect fruits, like Red wine, grape, mango, jackfruit, and other notes of rich Dark Chocolate and sesame with stevia like sweetness.

This is one of those coffees that forces you to rethink what “coffee” can even be with it's intense sweetness and mouthfeel - don't miss it!