Rounton Coffee: East Timor, Leubasa Village, Pulped Natural

Leubasa is produced by 14 small holders reside in Leubasa village in south west of Asia’s newest independent country, East Timor. The farms of Leubasa village are located at an altitude of 1700m to 1900m above sea level which make the village one of the highest altitude coffee grower in East Timor. Access to the village from capital Dili was extremely difficult during the wet season but thanks to the recent investments in the infrastructure, overall living conditions of coffee growers started to improve.

Being led by Senhor Cipriano da Conceicao Soares, Leubasa members pay great degree of attention to harvest only fully ripe cherries and avoid contamination of defective ones. Only fully ripe cherries are hand-picked and the harvest finishes just after lunch to process all the cherries within the same day. All the harvests of the day go through a floater selection to eliminate insect damaged beans followed by a de-pulping (wet-processing) with a traditional pulping machine that each farmer possess. After the cherries are removed, parchments are sorted again with a floater selection and fermented for 36 hours. Parchments are then washed, sun-dried on drying tarpaulins.

The coffee is then transported to the capital and port town of Dili. All the green coffee beans are then sorted with the colour sorter and by hand. The green coffee beans are then packed in Ecotact bags and jute bags to be exported.