The roasting of coffee beans in steel barrels over a wooden fire is the traditional method of producing the renowned ‘kopi Tenom.’
AN almost imperceptible smell gently tugged me out of my sleep. Opening my eyes, I realised it was the unmistakable aroma of something roasting.
As an avid coffee drinker, it took me just a few seconds to realise that the aroma was from the roasting of the beans of my favourite brew. That delectable scent of roasted coffee beans had wafted into the little cottage where my family and I had spent the night.
I had literally, as the phrase goes, woken up and smelled the coffee.
That cottage was located on the grounds of the Yit Foh coffee factory in Sabah’s interior district of Tenom, a three-hour drive across the Crocker Range or 170km from Kota Kinabalu.
Accountant turned farmer Tham is making it his mission to convince fellow farmers in Tenom and nearby districts to turn back to cultivating coffee trees that could provide them a potentially lucrative income.
Looking at my watch, it was 8.36am – a good half an hour since the wooden fires started burning under rotating steel containers holding the beans and other ingredients.
The roasting had begun for another day to produce the renowned “kopi Tenom”.
Kopi Tenom generally refers to coffee that is produced by Yit Foh and Tenom’s two other coffee roasters – Tong Fah and Fatt Choi – which were established in 1973 and 1987, respectively.
Yit Foh is by far the oldest of the three and was started in 1960 by Tenom farmer Yong Loong Vun, who saw the opportunity in processing the readily available coffee beans at that time.
A closer look at the roasted coffee beans.
Colonial British administrators introduced coffee – initially the Arabica variety – to the fertile Tenom valley in the 1920s, and the crop flourished for about 30 years until the mid-1950s when disease and insect infestation virtually wiped out the coffee trees.
Undaunted, they then brought in the Robusta variety – which, as the name suggests, is a more robust and hardy type of coffee tree that is resistant to disease and insect infestation and is suitable for a warmer climate.
The Robusta coffee trees flourished, and Tenom became known as Sabah’s coffee district, with the beans being exported out of the state.
Seeing an opportunity in the downstream processing of readily available coffee, Yong formulated a recipe and the signature technique to roast the beans over a wood-fuelled fire.
The result was an intensely dark-coloured aromatic brew with a hint of smokiness and a silky finish on the palate. The roasted coffee gained popularity initially among Tenom locals.
Word soon spread around, and demand increased for Yit Foh’s coffee – packed in bags emblazoned with an airplane, it became known as “Kopi Cap Kapalterbang”.
Workers packing ground roasted coffee.
Yong’s son Alex, who now runs Yit Foh, said the coffee roasting technique and the recipe have remained unchanged for 63 years to maintain the flavour and aroma that their customers have become accustomed to.
“Roasting over the wood fire takes two hours, while if we were to just roast the coffee beans over a gas fire, it would take just 40 minutes.
“But we stick to the traditional roasting method to maintain that unique flavour and aroma,” he said.
Other aspects of Yit Foh’s business have, however, evolved with an expansion in the product range. For decades, the company’s product line consisted mainly of coffee powder for households and coarsely ground beans for coffee shops. Alex is proud to point out that Yit Foh pioneered single-serving coffee sachets in 1997 for the convenience of coffee drinkers.
Demand for the coffee from the Tenom roasters continued to grow, especially with Sabah leaders like former chief minister Datuk Yong Teck Lee popularising the term “kopi Tenom”, Yong recalled.
“Ironically, amid increasing demand for kopi Tenom, the district’s coffee roasters faced a situation where locally produced beans have been on the decline,” said Tham Yau Siong, a Tenom native.
A coffee tree laden with ripened berries in Tham’s farm.
Tham, an accountant turned farmer, said that while coffee trees were a common sight around Tenom for decades, all that changed in the 1980s with the introduction of cocoa, which fetched higher prices.
“Suddenly, so many farmers chopped down their coffee trees to make way for cocoa seedlings. Over the years, cocoa trees matured with abundant harvests, and the resulting glut drove prices down,” Tham recalled.
Large swathes of cocoa trees were also hit by disease, prompting farmers to switch to oil palm, which has prevailed until now.
Currently, by his reckoning, coffee cultivation in Tenom covers just a few hundred hectares, about a tenth of the amount prior to the 1980s.
Tham, who is cultivating just over 3ha of coffee at his farm on the outskirts of Tenom town, has made it his mission to convince farmers in the district to return to growing coffee.
For a start, he hopes to band the farmers together through an association and from there, educate them about the potentially lucrative income from coffee.
Noting that coffee remains one of the world’s top 10 commodities, Tham pointed out that Malaysia imported 115,000 tonnes of the commodity in 2018, while local production was only 4,000 tonnes.
“If we can convince farmers here to each plant about 2ha of coffee trees, the potential gross income per year is about RM100,000.
“The input cost is about RM60,000, which would leave them with a net annual income of RM40,000 or RM3,000 per month,” said Tham.
He also knows that there remains a reluctance among farmers towards growing coffee, as it is said to be a labour-intensive crop and the plants are susceptible to ant infestation.
“That was the situation decades ago; we have developed new techniques in coffee cultivation,” he said.
“Actually, working on a 2ha area cultivated with coffee is manageable. Try harvesting oil palm. That is tough work,” Tham added.
The association could also operate as a cooperative where farmers could pool their produce and sell them collectively.
“The possibilities are there, but our farmers have to decide to make that switch back to coffee,” Tham added.
So, will farmers in Tenom wake up and smell the coffee?
