Rice Coffee - Proudly Philippines!

I still remember when I was small, my grandmother would roast some rice grains and once they are black, she will pour hot water in it. The aroma was so enticing, I can clearly remember it even now.

Rice coffee has been in existence for a pretty long time and it traces its roots all the way to the times of the world war. Specifically world war two, people had to find methods of survival and the rice coffee was one of the few viable option at the time. It was mainly taken by the Filipinos when Americans and the Japanese were fighting and they used the Philippines as the battle ground.

In these time, people got coffee from either the seeds of the lpil-ipil tree or from ground up roasted rice. The work was not all that complicated that’s why it was seen as a solution for many. The rice was simply roasted by simply stirring it on a work over an open flame. It was roasted till it was very dark brown. To turn it to powder the roasted rice was simply pounded with a pestle and mortar or ground up in a hand cracked grinder. Then the rice coffee just like brewing regular coffee was added to boiling water.

Coffee ground from coffee beans is known world wide to be very expensive. This acts as the loop hole for rice coffee to take advantage of making rice coffee a very lucrative business. Making of rice coffee is a goldmine. It’s a really profitable business.

Rice coffee only requires simple machines to be produced. Just pulvurize the rice by either using a pulverizer machine or mortar and pestle. Then, roast the rice flour using a mechanical roaster or karajai. If you want to put them into teabags, then you would need a tea bag machine or you can manually pack them. If you want to commercialize rice cofee production, big machines to make high volume of rice coffee may require you a big investment.

Many are consuming rice coffee, so there are also many people making them. According to those already in the business, one cavan of rice produces 168 pouches of ground rice coffee, each containing 250 grams. Using some mathematical analysis, a cavan of rice costs around P1,500 each 250 gram rice coffee costs around P30. With P1,500 initial raw material, plus overhead spent for production, a rice coffee maker can earn (P50 x 168) P8,400 per cavan of rice being made into rice coffee. Deduct the total cost of labor, raw material and other costs one remains with about ~P5,000 net income per cavan. These are just estimates and you can believe that if you play your cards a little better you can make more money. The amount of income is directly proportional to the amount of cavan one is able to make per month, or what is actually sold.

Rice coffee will bag you more money when it is put in tea bags. One cavan of rice makes approximately 5520 teabags and they retail at an average price of P5 each. If you do the math you can see that one can make more money.

For the business people this is the way to go.

Rice coffee does not make as good or quality coffee as compared to the one made from coffee beans but its is a viable option for those whose pockets are not that deep and want to enjoy some coffee.