Liberica and Excelsa Coffee

Liberica and excelsa are the coffee species outside the arabica-robusta duopoly: two members of the genus Coffea that tolerate heat, drought, and leaf-rust pressure neither mainstream species handles well, at the cost of the clean acidity and consistency that built the specialty industry around arabica. Liberica reached the Philippines in 1876, when the first seedlings were planted in Amadeo, Cavite, and grew into kapeng barako, a household name across the Batangas and Cavite provinces that still grow it, even though almost nobody outside the Philippines had tasted it until roasters started chasing it as a novelty in the last decade.

Until August 2025 the two were treated as one species, Coffea liberica, split into two varieties. A genomic study in Nature Plants reclassified them as three distinct species: C. liberica proper (native to upper West Africa), C. dewevrei, the excelsa of commerce (native to Central Africa, higher-yielding thanks to a thinner pulp and parchment), and C. klainei, a wild relative that never entered cultivation. The paper’s authors frame the split as practical rather than academic: each species carries distinct alleles breeders can target, which matters because production is climbing in Uganda, South Sudan, India, Vietnam, and Malaysia as growers look for coffee that survives conditions arabica cannot, even while the group stays under 1.5% of the world’s coffee crop overall.

Three independently published Coffee Review lots put the flavor range on record. Ghost Bird Coffee’s naturally sun-dried Malaysian Liberica reads dense and low-toned: banana, jackfruit, carob, brown sugar, and pipe tobacco. The same farm’s 20-day anaerobic-fermented lot is wilder, a spice-and-herb medley, grape candy, hazelnut, and cedar, sweetly savory rather than bright. Excelsa Coffee Company’s washed Vietnamese lot lands in between: black cherry, baker’s chocolate, date, toasted walnut, and the same aromatic cedar note turning up again in a different species, with a soft, gently tart acidity and a full, syrupy body. All three share the trait that shows up across the literature on both species: a heavier, longer body than arabica carrying lower acidity, which is also why brewers reach for full-immersion methods over pour-over.

The two species split geographically as much as botanically. Liberica grows lowland: Philippine Barako sits at just 300-500 m in Batangas and Cavite, and the Malaysian Liberica reviewed above comes from similarly low-lying farmland in Johor state. Excelsa runs meaningfully higher, 1,000-1,300 m, concentrated in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, the same altitude band and general region where Vietnam grows most of its robusta.