Ban Pha Mee Estate · Mae Hong Son, Northern Thailand
How a Northern Thai family farm reached a first-time 86+ Q-score
A single-origin partnership with a hillside estate above 1,400 metres — from a buyer who couldn't get the same cup twice, to a traceable washed lot that scored 86.5 and lifted grower income by more than a third in two harvests.
- Altitude
- 1,400–1,600 m
- Variety
- Chiang Mai 80, Typica
- Processing
- Washed
The Farm
Ban Pha Mee is a smallholder estate on the forested slopes of Mae Hong Son, close to the Myanmar border. The founding family has farmed the ridge for three generations, replanting former swidden plots with shade-grown Arabica under native canopy.
| Producer | Ban Pha Mee family estate (11 households) |
|---|---|
| Region | Mae Hong Son, Northern Thailand |
| Altitude | 1,400–1,600 m above sea level |
| Varieties | Chiang Mai 80, Typica |
| Processing | Washed, 36-hour fermentation, raised-bed dried |
| Soil | Well-drained volcanic loam under native shade |
| Harvest window | December – February, hand-picked selective harvest |
| Annual lot size | ~9,000 kg green (single estate) |
The Buyer's Challenge
A specialty roaster loved the estate's flavour potential but couldn't build a menu around it. Three sourcing problems kept the coffee off their core line-up.
Inconsistent quality year to year
Cherry was picked and pulped by ripeness and weather rather than a fixed protocol, so cup scores swung several points between harvests. The roaster couldn't promise a stable flavour to their café accounts.
No traceability past the collector
The lot arrived through an aggregator that blended several villages together. There was no way to tie a bag back to a farm, an altitude, or a processing method — which made a single-origin story impossible to tell honestly.
An ethics question with no answer
The buyer wanted to know growers were paid fairly and that the coffee wasn't grown on cleared forest. Through the commodity channel, none of that could be verified.
The Partnership Solution
White Canopy replaced the commodity channel with a direct relationship between the roaster and the estate — and put quality and agronomy support on the ground to make the cup repeatable.
- 01
Direct-trade agreement, farm to roaster
We contracted the estate directly, agreed a price well above the local market rate, and pre-financed part of the harvest so the family didn't have to sell cherry early to cover costs.
- 02
Harvest and processing training
Our field team ran two seasons of selective-picking and fermentation workshops, set a fixed washed protocol, and added raised drying beds with a moisture and timing log for every lot.
- 03
Lot-level traceability
Every bag is now tagged to the estate, altitude band, variety, and processing date, with cupping records attached — so the roaster can trace and tell the exact origin story.
- 04
Verified sustainability
We mapped the plots to confirm the coffee grows under existing native shade with no new forest clearing, and documented the price paid to each household.
The Outcome
Two harvests into the partnership, the estate has a repeatable protocol, a specialty score, and materially higher income — and the roaster has a single-origin they can build a menu around.
86.5
SCA Q-score
up from a variable 82–84
+38%
Grower income per kg
vs. the prior commodity channel
100%
Lot-level traceability
farm, altitude, variety, process
11
Farming households
on the direct-trade agreement
Cup profile
86.5 / 100 (SCA)
- Milk chocolate
- Macadamia
- Honeyed citrus
- Silky body
- Clean finish
The fixed washed protocol produced a clean, sweet cup with milk-chocolate depth, macadamia richness, and a honeyed-citrus lift — the kind of consistent, traceable Northern Thai profile the roaster now pours as a single-origin filter.
Source a coffee with a story like this
Tell us what you're roasting and roughly how much you need. We'll match you with a traceable Northern Thai lot — and send samples so you can cup it before you commit.