Q&A: Peace Sakulclanuwat Wants To Give Thai Coffee the Spotlight
The coffee professional won second place at last year’s U.S. Brewers Cup Championships with a Thai coffee blend. Now, she’s on a mission to give Thailand’s coffee scene the attention it deserves.
This conversation was nearly a year in the making.
Peace Sakulclanuwat has been in the coffee industry for more than a decade. I interviewed her last year, right after she won second place at the U.S. Brewers Cup Championships in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Peace used a blend featuring coffee from Thailand, which is still uncommon in the competition (although a growing number of competitors are using coffees from undersung origins like Vietnam and Myanmar).
Peace is originally from Thailand, and one of her missions is giving Thai coffee a bigger platform. In our conversation, she shares more about Thailand’s coffee-growing and -consuming scene, and we discuss how coffee competitions create demand for and interest in regions that may otherwise get overlooked.
Peace is also an educator for Coffee Project NY (we had founders Chi Sum Ngai and Kaleena Teoh on the podcast before), and she describes how special it is to work with coffee grown where you are from—and how rapidly Thai coffee quality has improved.
This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Ashley: What was your first memory of coffee? Did you grow up with it at all?
Peace: No. My first memory of coffee is going to Starbucks and getting the Caramel Macchiato. I didn’t even know the difference between a latte and a cappuccino. I just knew I wanted to drink coffee and it tasted good.
But how did I get into coffee? My personal experience in terms of hospitality: My family owned a restaurant back in Thailand. So I grew up helping my parents run the restaurant—serving people, doing all the money, counting, taking orders. I think that is in my blood, right?
But it was never a thing I considered as my professional career, because coming from an Asian-oriented family, my parents wanted me to work in a white-collar job, stable-income job, working in the office. They didn’t foresee me working, running around sweating, cooking or brewing coffee for people.
When we moved here [to New York], my mom owned two restaurants, and before I graduated from my college, she asked me if I could help manage one of the restaurants for her. I did that for about two years, but then the restaurant closed.
My ex-partner at the time—I mention her because she was a person who really pushed me to where I am today, so I want to give her credit for that—she’s like, “Okay, let’s think about what do you want to do in life? What do you enjoy doing the most right now? Don’t think two or three years ahead. Just think about what you want to do right now.”
I said, “We really enjoy going to different cafes, trying different coffees, enjoying the New York lifestyle and socializing with people.” Then she asked, “Do you want to try working in coffee?” That’s how my coffee journey began.
Ashley: How’d you end up at Coffee Project?
Peace: Coffee Project happened when I was working at Starbucks Reserve Roastery. I was full-time there, and I started to feel I’m losing my passion for coffee.
I asked myself, “Okay, how long can I do this for?” And even though the income was good, I was stable, and I had very good benefits, but I needed to find something to light a fire in myself again.
I came across Coffee Project when I saw an Instagram post from the owners that they were looking for a part-time barista. I always wanted to work at a place where they roast their own coffee, they source their own coffee. They also offered a training program and they were about to open their first roastery in Long Island City. So, I sent my application and got hired as a part-time barista at their Brooklyn location.
I started at Coffee Project as a part-time barista, while maintaining my full-time position at Starbucks Reserve Roastery. So I worked seven days straight, but I didn’t feel tired or exhausted at all—making pour-overs, working behind the bar and talking to people again brought me so much joy, and lightened up my fire in coffee again. Eventually, Sum and Kaleena [the owners of Coffee Project] asked me to come on full-time to manage their East Village location, and now I’m an educator and a trainer at the roastery and SCA training lab in the Long Island City location.
Ashley: When did you start exploring coffees from Thailand?
Peace: That started back in 2018. I saw a post on Facebook from one of the coffee farms that I’ve been following in Thailand, in Chiang Rai. They’re an Indigenous group of people who grow coffee in northern Thailand. The owner inherited his coffee farm from his parents, so he took over.
They were looking for volunteers to do this program to come up to the farm and learn about coffee processing—you get to live as a coffee farmer for two or three weeks in Thailand.
Those two, three weeks were probably the best experience in my life that I ever had, and I wish I could go back and do that again. That’s how I started learning to love Thai coffee: First of all, it’s connected with my origin. Second of all, I feel like not everyone gets to use coffee from the country they’re from—and I started thinking about using Thai coffee for competition.
The first year I competed, in 2019, I didn’t have enough time to source Thai coffee for the qualifying competition. When that ended, I thought, “Okay, how can I make myself better as a competitor—and how do I stay true to myself, to my own identity?”
I didn’t qualify for the national competition, but someone gave up their spot, so I got to compete in the U.S. Brewers Cup Championships—and I used a coffee from Thailand. I was proud of my performance. I was able to deliver everything that I wanted to do. I wanted to showcase Thai coffee. I even used Thai music as my background music.
I placed 17th, but now I was like, “I want to continue competing. I can stay true to my own identity, but I need to know how to play the game better.”
Ashley: You continued competing, and in 2024, you won second place in the U.S. Brewers Cup Championship with a coffee blend that was part-Thai, part-Colombian. What did that taste like?
Peace: With the Thai coffee, I remember the first sip: Right off the bat, it tasted like strawberry jam. Super sweet. Very strawberry. I used a CT62 Dripper, the dripper that the Taiwanese Brewers Cup Champion used in 2022 or 2023. I also used a Paragon, which chills the extraction to emphasize aromatic compounds and enhance sweetness. And, this blend happened to be the perfect combination for this brewing method.
Originally, I wanted to use 100% Thai coffee, but it lacked complexity in acidity. It was sweet and had a really nice mouthfeel. Until one of the Coffee Project owner’s friends, Ibrahim from The Espresso Lab in Dubai, sent us a bunch of competition-level coffee they weren’t using.
So he sent us a lot of samples; they were all Gesha coffees. When we had the coffee on the table, we were like, “Oh, this is how it feels when you have so many good options on the table, but you don’t know what to pick!” I was so overwhelmed, and I had my Thai coffee on the table. I was trying to decide if I should blend the Thai coffee with any of these Geshas or not.
It turned out that this Colombian Maragogype from La Negrita they sent was the perfect blend for my Thai coffee; they complemented each other in a balanced way. The majority of the blend is Colombia Maragogype: I’m using 12 grams of the Colombia Maragogype and then 3 grams of the Thai Java.
These are the notes I gave to the judges for this blend: The aroma is floral like coffee blossom, cherry, nectarine, and purple grape. And then for the flavor, it tastes like nectarine, golden raisin, Rainier cherry, rum, and strawberry. The sweetness is sugar sweetness, like cane sugar, and fruity sweetness, like ripe Asian pear and strawberry jam.
Ashley: Why do you think we don’t see as much Thai coffee in the specialty industry?
Peace: I think the majority of coffee produced in Thailand is pretty much consumed domestically. So the farmers mainly focus on their production, and then selling it to the coffee shops inside Thailand.
The quality is still a work in progress, but it’s improving. Nowadays, almost every coffee shop in Thailand serves Thai coffee on their menu. Coffee competitions have had a significant impact on the industry worldwide, and now some Thai coffee competitors are using Thai beans on international stages. Thai producers are also focusing on improving coffee processing by introducing new technologies and innovations to elevate their products. Additionally, many experts from outside the country have been coming in to educate farmers and help improve quality.
The producer of my Thai Java coffee was actually the first coffee producer in Thailand to grow the Gesha variety.
Ashley: It seems like quality has gone up pretty significantly in a short period of time?
Peace: Yeah. Very short period of time. I would say maybe four to five years ago. I think a lot of that has to do with competition. When a Thai competitor goes to compete on the world stage, some of them choose Thai coffee to compete with.
When I got second place in 2024, the farm I sourced my coffee from reached out to me and asked, “Do you mind if we share your video and share your recipe?”
It’s really rewarding to see people in Thailand recognize and appreciate the work I’m putting in. It feels great to showcase their work on behalf of them.
Ashley: Are you going to compete again?
Peace: I think so—I think so. I was debating after they announced the winners. I looked over at everyone, and I’m like, “I don’t know if I should go again because this year is probably the most exhausting year. I don’t know if I can do this again.”
But everybody said to me, “You’re this close. You need to just cross the finish line.”
I think I’m gonna go again, and I’m still going to use Thai coffee, but we’ll see if I have to blend it or not. I would prefer not to if I can find a very good one. I have to stay true to myself.
Ashley: What did it mean to you to be able to use Thai coffee on the competition stage?
Peace: Well, first of all, I think it represents myself. I got the chance to see coffee grow with the coffee farmer back home, and see all the work that they do. I want to showcase their work and push Thai coffee to be recognized wider in the coffee industry.
I think Asian coffee in general never gets to have that fame or recognition compared to other growing regions in the world. I want to be that small part to make it possible.
I think competition is a great way to grab attention. When you win—or even when you place well—people become curious about the coffee that a competitor uses. After I took second place, for example, even though I didn’t win, people still approached me asking, “What coffee did you use?”
To me, I feel like this is my mission, because I now have the opportunity to share and educate people more about how good Thai coffee can be. I strongly believe that, in the future, it will continue to grow and gain recognition.