Does Myanmar Grow Good Specialty Coffee?

We recently tapped Myanmar as one of our top emerging origins to watch for specialty coffee.

While still rare to see higher scoring specialty grade coffees coming out of Myanmar, it is slowly becoming more common.

Myanmar (formally Burma), is a country with a history that's about as long and complex as it gets. For hundreds of years it's been invaded by foreign powers, battered by natural disasters and grappled with massive domestic political instability.

Without diving too deep into Myanmars rich social and political history, suffice it to say that coffee production in general - let alone specialty grade - hasn't been much of a priority.

Myanmar has also been largely cut off from the outside world. Knowledge of the market for specialty coffee, let alone the production and harvest techniques needed to produce it, up until very recently, was sparse.

Almost as sparse as the infrastructure needed to support it for export.

With one of the longest running civil wars in history taking place between the military dictatorship and the pro democracy revolutionaries, the socioeconomic situation there remains fluid.

The specialty coffee situation, however, has come on leaps and bounds since the country first opened up to foreigners in 2014.

Myanmar Coffee - Quick Facts:

  • An estimated 7,500 metric tons of coffee are produced across Myanmar each year, and most of that is exported to neighbouring Thailand.
  • About 500 metric tons per year are selected for export to other countries.
  • The most common processing method here (by quite some way) is washed.
  • Mandalay and Shan State produce most of the countries coffee, with other states like Chin State and Kachin now opening up to specialty too.
  • The first specialty grade coffee was exported from Myanmar in 2016 - just 36 Metric Tons / 2 containers.
  • Annual cupping competitions at origin saw a 4x-ing of specialty grade (80+ point) coffees in just 4 short years from 2015 to 2018 [source].

Coffee Growing Regions In Myanmar

Shan State and the Mandalay Region are the areas responsible for the majority of Myanmars specialty coffee production, but other areas of the country are also starting to produce some notable harvests.

Kayin State and Chin State are two up and coming regions that you'll likely start to see more and more.

The Rapid Rise Of Specialty Coffee In Myanmar

The turning point for Myanmar coffee quality came in 2015, when the Coffee Quality Institute USAID cooperated on a project in Shan State to improve quality through education.

Prior to that, post harvest processing techniques were poor, and coffee quality suffered greatly as a result.

The underlying potential however, has always been there.

Myanmar has great terroir, climate, altitude, many great varietals and lots of potential. Increasingly, it now has the infrastructure and the training to produce coffees at a serious level. Competition level coffees grown here are now teeteringly close to crossing the 90+ point barrier.