Tublay, Benguet: Coffee Harvest Tour

Related story: Running Jaunts in Baguio, Philippines

Basic requirements when going on a trip to a different place: a running area, a nearby good coffee area, and bonus if there’s a crochet / knitting shop. These were all checked in Baguio City 2016 trip but I’m going to post about coffee, coffee, and coffee because coffee never gets old. =)

We stayed in TALA Share & Guesthouse >>. I guess the thing that attracted us to stay there because they mentioned they have free fresh grounded coffee beans in their pantry (not sure if they still offer it now). And, on top of that, they happened to have a COFFEE HARVEST TOUR event on the days we were there. So, I / we could not miss it! (If you’re interested to join this event, you can check their facebook page here >>.)

The coffee harvest tour participants met up in Cafe Yagam (a must try food place in Baguio), which happens to be in the same compound of TALA Guesthouse. We’re only a few Filipinos in the group of Asian friends: Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Taiwanese.

Asians represent!

As they say, it’s the journey, not the destination. And so we travel to Tublay, Benguet, where the coffee farm is, from Baguio in style (at least for our Asian friends). The “top-ride” was popular to our neighboring Asian brothers. =)

The journey also involved some “pinikpikan” chicken. It’s a local dish of Cordillera, which involved a ritual. And, I’m not going to describe how “pinikpikan” is done as you might protest that it’s animal cruelty.

We were welcome by a tomb when we arrived at our hosts’ house in Tublay, Benguet. It’s their culture to keep their beloved deceased family member buried nearby.

We started with a talk about coffee and the NGO they worked with by one of the roasters of Kapi Tako (sorry, I forgot her name but I tried her roasted coffee beans, and it was great!).

Then, we proceeded to drinking coffee before any thing else. =)

I think I could end my blog post here because we’re done drinking coffee. =) But here are more photos from the Coffee Harvest Tour.

Descending into coffee heaven!

Red or green? I don’t think there were a lot of “ripe” beans when we were there.


Let me just #bloggerpose because I was too shy to pick coffee beans. I don’t want to hurt them.

Their harvest…

My borrowed harvest…

Here’s a blow-by-blow steps on how to make coffee out of the fresh coffee fruit!

After harvesting, the beans need “filter.” The good and bad beans need to be separated because, of course, you will only roast the good beans. The bad beans can still be roasted if you don’t want to be picky. From a business perspective, just roast them all to make more money. =)

This is one way to filter good beans from bad beans. The beans that float are the good beans (or maybe I’m wrong.).

You remove the coffee fruit skin through this.

I no longer remember what was this step about. And, I just have to touch that long post. =)

You can just eat the bean fresh after peeling the skin.

Then more filtering, and sorting of beans.

Then skip to roasting because there should be drying to be done but we cannot wait for days for that. =)

Then, the most important step: POUR YOUR HEART INTO IT!

Then, more coffee drinking!

With our hosts coffee farmers.

Group photo before going back to Baguio City.

More coffee drinking session when we got back at the guest house.

There’s no such thing as too much coffee, right!

In case you want to order Kopi Tako coffee: