Nav: Home > Coffee >

Why Does Golden Mandheling Also Have Acidity? Who is Mandheling Suitable For and How Should It Be Brewed

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, Follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style) for professional barista exchanges. Why Does Golden Mandheling Also Have Acidity? Who is Mandheling Suitable For and How Should It Be Brewed. Mandheling: Rich and full-bodied flavor, herbal medicinal notes, with pleasant acidity, strong aftertaste, and solid, mellow mouthfeel. Aromatic and mellow aroma,

Why Does FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling Also Taste Acidic? Who is Mandheling Suitable for and How Should It Be Enjoyed?

FrontStreet Coffee's Mandheling Profile

FrontStreet Coffee's Mandheling offers a rich and solid mouthfeel with herbal medicinal notes, pleasant acidity, strong aftertaste, and a mellow, full-bodied texture. The aroma is mellow with moderate acidity and rich sweetness that is truly intriguing, making it suitable for dark roasting that releases a rich fragrance.

The Gentleman of Coffee - FrontStreet Coffee's Sumatra Mandheling

Mandheling is a premium coffee bean grown at altitudes of 750-1,500 meters in the mountainous regions, with the finest quality Mandheling produced in the Takengon and Sidikalang areas. Due to its irreplaceable mellow flavor, UCC Ueshima Coffee Co., Japan's largest coffee company, partnered with the renowned Sumatra coffee merchant PT Gunung Lintong in 1995 to establish their first coffee plantation in Asia, demonstrating how significant Mandheling's position is in the coffee world.

Some say Mandheling is heavy and intense, while others find it gentle and easygoing. Mandheling has always expressed its most unique sweetness through its most distinctive bitterness, much like the bittersweet nature of life. No amount of sugar can completely mask that bitterness—it's striking at first taste. Yet the captivating aroma it releases makes us uncontrollably infatuated with it. Its bitterness is like the thorns beside a flower, making us more aware, while its fragrance is refreshing. Mandheling's bitterness won't make you irritable; instead, it makes you feel more clear-headed. Before you encounter true suffering, Mandheling is just an ordinary bitter beverage—just a liquid to refresh you, just a tool to make you pause; when you truly face pain, it will smile and tell you: "Because love is refined from bitterness," allowing you to calm down and savor it slowly.

Why is it Called "Golden Mandheling"?

FrontStreet Coffee's Mandheling is a gem among Indonesian coffees, and FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling is the finest gem among Mandhelings. FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling is obtained through careful manual selection of full-bodied, lustrously colored Mandheling coffee beans—truly a stunning beauty among coffees. In fact, to improve the high defect rate in Mandheling beans, the Japanese began implementing meticulous quality management long ago, using four rounds of manual selection to eliminate defective beans. Unfortunately, "Golden Mandheling" was trademarked by Indonesia's Pawani Coffee Company, making Golden Mandheling exclusive to PWN.

PWN's Golden Mandheling is the true Golden Mandheling in the real sense. Golden Mandheling stamped with the PWN brand is also a guarantee of quality. PWN's yellow Mandheling undergoes three manual selections and one machine selection, resulting in beautiful beans. PWN Company has trademarked Golden Mandheling, meaning only Golden Mandheling produced by PWN Company can be considered genuine "Golden Mandheling." Many beans on the market that are not from PWN Company but carry the Golden Mandheling brand name should actually be called Fine Mandheling. "Golden Mandheling" is not an aged bean—it's simply a product name created by a company.

The Difference Between FrontStreet Coffee's Mandheling and FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling

Some coffee friends have asked, as coffee beginners, what's the difference between FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling and FrontStreet Coffee's Mandheling G1, as they really can't taste the difference. For professional-level coffee connoisseurs and friends with sensitive palates, if these two coffees are tasted simultaneously, the contrast will be very obvious: the Yellow Mandheling's sweetness and cleanliness, richness, and wild spice notes are superior to G1, which is one reason why Yellow Mandheling is much more expensive than G1.

Taste Profile

FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling tastes cleaner than FrontStreet Coffee's Lindong Mandheling. The typical herbal, earthy, and woody flavors of regular Mandheling have almost disappeared, but the caramel sweetness is more intense, and the fruit acidity is brighter and more elegant. Typically, FrontStreet Coffee's Lindong Mandheling is best roasted to after the second crack to effectively reduce off-flavors, but FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling offers excellent clarity and sweetness whether roasted before or after the second crack, providing more room for roasting interpretation.

Sumatra is the main producing area for Indonesian premium beans, with a very complex coffee system that can be simplified into four types: Mandheling, Golden Mandheling, Lake Tawa Coffee, and Aged Mandheling, plus Java Old Brown. FrontStreet Coffee's Mandheling has unique herbal and woody notes, FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling has bright richness and excellent sweetness, while FrontStreet Coffee's Aged Mandheling is sweet as honey. (Lake Tawa Coffee and Java Old Brown won't be detailed here.)

Under the strict management of the Japanese, FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling undergoes multiple layers of screening to eliminate defective beans, finally presenting high-quality beans with dark green color and uniform appearance. The typical herbal, earthy, and woody flavors of Mandheling have almost disappeared, but the caramel flavor is more intense, and the fruit acidity tends toward brightness. Many people who first encounter FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling's initial impression is rich and mellow with prominent bitterness but extremely weak fruit acidity. However, this is actually related to the fact that most Golden Mandheling on the market currently uses medium-dark roasting.

But in reality, from the perspective of Golden Mandheling green beans themselves, this is a coffee bean with extremely high acidity. Its acidity transformation characteristic is that under light-medium, medium, and medium-dark roasting, the fruit acidity will change from quite obvious strong acidity to moderate acidity, then to weak acidity. If a friend who has always drunk medium-dark roasted FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling tastes a light-medium roasted Mandheling, they will surely wonder if they're still drinking Mandheling.

Roast Level Analysis

1. Conventional Medium-Dark Roast

Rich and mellow with more noticeable bitterness, chocolate and subtle sweetness more prominent, obvious licorice aroma, weak fruit acidity, average smoothness, strong but less complex aroma.

2. Medium Roast

Excellent balance. At this roast level, the Yellow Mandheling loses some of its masculine character but gains some gentleness. The mouthfeel is purer than medium-dark roast, but the richness is still good. Smoothness is significantly better than medium-dark roast smoothness. Bitterness is still prominent but noticeably weaker than medium-dark roast, and fruit acidity is significantly enhanced.

3. Light-Medium Roast

This roast level of Yellow Mandheling is most perplexing. If medium-dark Yellow Mandheling has prominent bitterness, then light-medium roasted Yellow Mandheling has fruit acidity reaching the peak level that this writer can handle. The mouthfeel of light-medium roasted Yellow Mandheling is truly smooth, with obvious fruit acidity but comfortable entry, creating a mouth-watering sensation on both sides of the mouth. Moreover, Yellow Mandheling's masculine character has completely vanished—Yellow Mandheling instantly transforms into a fresh and delicate profile!

Therefore, this writer's conclusion is: if you're a friend who enjoys rich, mellow coffee with weak acidity, choose medium-dark roast without hesitation. But if you're a friend who can accept different levels of fruit acidity, quickly try medium and light-medium roasted Golden Mandheling!

Pour-Over Parameters Recommendation

Pour-over FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling: 15g of coffee, medium grind (Fuji Royal grinder setting 4), Kono filter cup, water temperature 88-85°C. First pour 30g of water for 27-second bloom, then pour to 105g and pause. Wait until the water level drops to half before continuing to pour. Slowly pour until reaching 225g, avoiding the tail section. Water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, extraction time 2:00.