Data report · the Cascara catalog
The State of Philippine Specialty Coffee 2026.
Nobody measures the Philippine specialty coffee market. Cascara does — bean by bean, in the cellar. This report reads the catalog as of July 2026: 146 contributing roasters, 2,115 verified beans, 34 origin countries. Of those, 792 beans are sold by the 84 Philippine roasters in the catalog — the shelf this report is about. On that shelf the market has already made its choices. Natural process outnumbers washed. One bean in four is fermented. And the largest single origin is the Philippines itself.
Beans tracked
2,115
Verified and listed in the cellar
Roasters
146
84 Philippine · 62 international
Origins
34
Countries of origin in the catalog
Natural has overtaken washed.
The defining fact of this market: washed coffee — the historical default of specialty — is now the second process on Philippine shelves. Of the beans Philippine roasters sell, 38.3% are natural, 29.1% washed, and 24.4% anaerobic or otherwise fermented. Natural and fermented together account for 62.8% of that shelf.
Read across Cascara's entire catalog — which is majority roasters based abroad — the order reverses and washed leads at 36.4%. That is a fact about the catalog, not about this market. Earlier editions of this report published the catalog figure under a Philippine headline; see revisions.
Philippine roasters' shelves
Beans whose roaster publishes no process at all are excluded from these shares rather than guessed at — a transparency gap, not a category.
The roaster landscape.
The catalog tracks 146 roasters with at least one live bean, across 22 countries. 84 are Philippine — 57.5% of the field — and they account for 792 of the 2,146 live beans. The other 62 roast abroad and reach Philippine drinkers through importers, cafes, and direct shipping. Japan sends more roasters into this market than any other country.
What each process does to the cup, measured.
Every bean in the cellar carries a sensory profile on four axes — acidity, body, sweetness, and funk — scored 0 to 1. Averaged across 2,115beans, the axes show what the process labels actually mean in the cup. Washed coffee runs bright and light: the highest acidity of any process and the lowest funk, at 0.13. Anaerobic and fermented lots sit at 0.77 — a sixfold gap on the same scale. Natural is where the market's sweetness lives: 0.91, the highest of any process.
Where the beans come from.
Across Cascara's whole catalog, 1,737 beans are imported single origins drawn from 34 countries. Colombia and Ethiopia lead, as they do in most specialty markets, and Panama sits third with 309 beans, 266 of them gesha.
That ranking describes the catalog, not this market. Narrow it to what Philippine roasters actually stock and the shape changes: the Philippines is the largest origin at 33.8%, ahead of Ethiopia and Colombia.
Catalog-wide, blends account for a further 145 beans and 25 list no origin; both are excluded from origin shares rather than bucketed.
Philippine-grown
The largest origin on Philippine shelves is home.
239 of the 708 beans Philippine roasters sell that state a country were grown here — 33.8%, the largest single origin, ahead of every import. Across Cascara's full catalog the same 239 lots read as just 12.1% and rank 4th, because two thirds of that catalog is shelves abroad that stock no Philippine coffee at all. Both numbers are true. Only one of them is about this market.
The local lots follow the wider tilt: natural process leads (85 of 238), with washed and fermented behind it.
On the Process Spectrum, Philippine-grown coffee is Fluid-dominant: 115 of 238 lots, 48.3%, against 38.4% across the catalog. The Clean corner is the smallest at 36 lots; the washed, high-grown clarity that wins the national quality competitions is still the exception, not the rule.
The market on the Process Spectrum.
Cascara reads every coffee against a four-corner Process Spectrum and assigns each bean one identity. Across the catalog, Fluid is the largest corner at 38.4%, with Clean behind it. For a market this young the spread is the story — no single corner owns it, and Experimental is already comparable to Classic.
Clarity, bright acidity, clean finish.
Warmth, body, ripe fruit.
Balance, range, adapts to context.
Edge, ferment, wine notes.
This report is updated, not replaced.
Every edition stays published. When a figure changes, the change is recorded here with the reason — including when we get something wrong. The catalog grows as roasters' lineups are ingested, so a number moving between editions usually means the cellar is seeing more of the market, not that the market shifted.
Editions
Change since June 2026
Coverage, not market movement. Measures whose definition changed between editions are deliberately not shown as a trend.
Revisions
2026-07-23
Rescoped to Philippine roasters; catalogue refreshed
The June edition computed its market figures over Cascara's entire catalogue, 63% of which is stocked by roasters outside the Philippines. It therefore reported the Philippines as the fourth-largest origin at 11%. Measured against what Philippine roasters actually sell, the Philippines is the LARGEST origin, at 33.8%. Origin, process, variety and flavour figures are now scoped to Philippine roasters, with catalogue-wide figures kept and labelled as such. Catalogue coverage also grew from 1,598 to 2,115 verified beans.
2026-07-23
Flavour-cluster matching corrected
Cascara's sensory taxonomy matched flavour keywords by substring, so 'pea' matched 'peach' and 'pear' and eight similar collisions fired the wrong categories. Word-boundary matching shipped as Sensory Derivation v6.3.0. The vegetal cluster in particular was overstated roughly sixfold. All flavour figures in this edition use the corrected taxonomy.
2026-06-11
First edition published
1,598 verified beans from 200 roaster records, snapshotted June 2026.
Methodology.
All figures are aggregated from the Cascara catalog — 146 contributing roasters and 2,115 verified beans, snapshotted July 2026. Only verified beans are counted; pending submissions and retired lots are excluded. A roaster counts once it has at least one live bean, which is why the roaster figure is lower than the number of records in the catalog.
Figures described as this market are scoped to the 792 beans sold by Philippine roasters. Figures described as the catalog cover all 2,146 live beans, including the 62 roasters based abroad whose coffee reaches Philippine drinkers. The two are different populations and are never mixed; where both are interesting, both are shown.
Process labels are taken from each roaster's own published description and grouped into five families; beans with no stated process are reported as unspecified, not guessed. Sensory axes and identity classifications follow the cellar's standard reading of each bean — the same profile members brew against. Origin reflects the green coffee's country of growth, not where it was roasted.
This report reads the supply side — what roasters sell. Its sibling, What Filipino coffee drinkers are drinking, reads the demand side from the brew log: what members actually brew, and whether the bag's tasting notes hold up in the cup.
Cite freely with attribution and a link to this page. For the underlying aggregates or questions about the data, write to the cellar.
Your corner of the market
2,115 beans. Four corners. One is yours.
This report describes the market. Calibration describes you — five questions, and the cellar reads your palate against the same spectrum every bean above is measured on.
Calibrate your palate →Common questions.
How many specialty coffee roasters are there in the Philippines?
The Cascara catalog tracks 84 Philippine specialty roasters with at least one live bean as of July 2026, alongside 62 international roasters whose beans circulate here. This is a catalog count, not a census — it covers roasters whose lineups are listed and verified in the cellar.
What is the most common coffee process in the Philippines?
Natural. Of the beans Philippine roasters sell, 38.3% are natural process against 29.1% washed, and 24.4% are anaerobic or otherwise fermented. Natural and fermented together account for most of what is on Philippine shelves — washed coffee is no longer the default here. Across Cascara's whole catalog, which includes roasters abroad, washed still leads.
Where do the beans in the Philippine market come from?
On Philippine roasters' shelves the Philippines itself is the largest origin — 239 of the 708 beans that state a country, 33.8%. Ethiopia, Colombia, Panama follow. Measured across Cascara's entire catalog, which is majority non-Philippine roasters, the ranking is different: Colombia and Ethiopia lead and the Philippines places 4th. The distinction matters, and earlier editions of this report conflated the two.
How much Philippine-grown coffee is in the specialty market?
33.8% of what Philippine roasters sell is grown in the Philippines — 239 lots. Across Cascara's full catalog, including roasters abroad who stock no Philippine coffee at all, the same 239 lots are 12.1%. Local lots lean natural process, and more of them read Fluid — balance and range — than any other corner of the Process Spectrum.
What are the four coffee identities?
Cascara reads every coffee against a four-corner Process Spectrum. Clean: clarity, bright acidity, a clean finish. Classic: warmth, body, ripe fruit. Fluid: balance and range. Experimental: edge, ferment, wine notes. Every bean in the catalog carries one.
Where does this data come from?
All figures are aggregated from the Cascara catalog: 146 contributing roasters and 2,115 verified beans, snapshotted July 2026. Pending or unverified submissions are excluded. Figures about the Philippine market are scoped to beans sold by Philippine roasters; catalog-wide figures are labelled as such. Every past edition and every correction is published on this page.
Read next.
Specialty coffee in the Philippines — a 2026 guide
The national map — Manila, Baguio, Cebu, Davao, and the Bukidnon highlands.
Gloria Lagawan tops the PCE 2026 auction
₱4,900 a kilo for a washed Bukidnon lot — what the PCQC result means for Philippine-grown coffee.
Coffee processing methods, explained
Washed, natural, honey, anaerobic — what each one does to the cup, and why the labels matter.
Author · Gil Erez, Founder of Cascara · Published 11 June 2026 · Updated 23 July 2026