Bali Coffee Region: Indonesian Golden Coffee Bean Cultivation, History, and Flavor Characteristics

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Indonesian Coffee Origins

Indonesia consists of more than 17,000 islands scattered along the equatorial volcanic belt with fertile soil. Famous growing regions include Sumatra in the west, Sulawesi in the central region, and Java in the south. Coffee was brought to Jakarta in 1696 by the Dutch governor from Malabar, India, where local farmers were forced to reduce white rice production and switch to coffee cultivation. Since 1850, the Dutch East India Company expanded planting areas to other Indonesian islands. To date, Indonesia is the world's fourth-largest coffee exporter.

Indonesia's Bold Coffee Profile

Indonesia has long been the home of many bold coffee beans. The coffee beans produced here have low acidity, rich body, and intense flavors, with notable members including Java and Sumatra. The eastern Indonesian island of Bali has geologically fertile volcanic ash layers, combined with high temperatures, humidity, and abundant rainfall, resulting in rich coffee bean production.

Bali's Unique Coffee Varieties

The coffee trees on Bali Island are quite special, representing a new variety created by combining two different coffee species. Local people grafted Robusta variety branches onto the upper parts of Arabica variety trees, creating today's unique Bali coffee variety. DOMBA's Bali Golden Coffee beans grow at approximately 1,200 meters above sea level in the cool, misty highlands of the island. They display a golden color and intense aroma, hence their name.

DOMBA's Traditional Processing Method

After harvesting, DOMBA's golden coffee beans are selected, tested, and transported to the factory, where they are spread flat and slowly sun-dried for several days in preparation for roasting. DOMBA's coffee beans are not rapidly machine-roasted like other major coffee brands. Instead, they are "slowly" roasted at 200-240°C for about half an hour. (DOMBA's coffee beans are claimed to be medium-dark roasted, but compared to the typical 15-minute medium-dark roast in general coffee factories, DOMBA's "half hour" is indeed very "slow.") The coffee beans change color from grass-green to golden, then to light cinnamon. As the oils naturally evaporate to perfect maturity, the coffee beans finally present a hazelnut-like color.

▼▲ After harvesting, DOMBA's golden coffee beans are selected, tested, and slowly sun-dried for several days

Peaberry vs. Flat Beans

Generally, the coffee beans we buy in the market are the two seeds contained within normal coffee cherry fruits. There is a crack on the side where the two mother beans touch. These common coffee beans we see are called flat beans.

Sometimes, among the two coffee flat beans in a coffee cherry fruit, due to pests or drought, one may fail to develop properly. The remaining bean develops into a smaller, oval-shaped bean that fills the entire internal space of the coffee berry. This type of coffee bean we call a peaberry. Therefore, "peaberry" is just a Chinese colloquial term referring to this mutant coffee bean variety and has nothing to do with gender. Peaberries often appear at the tops of young coffee trees, and picking workers need to manually separate them from flat beans by hand. Roasted peaberries smell less aromatic than flat beans, but when brewed, the coffee is rich without bitterness, with faint sour and bitter notes, intense aroma, and full body.

Peaberry vs. Flat Bean Comparison:

Shape: Round and full (whole coffee bean) vs. Flat and long (1/2 coffee bean)

Aroma: Roasted beans have less aroma vs. Roasted beans have intense aroma

Flavor: Brewed coffee has rich flavor vs. Brewed coffee has lighter flavor

Due to the low production of peaberries, accounting for only about 5% of total coffee bean harvests, and requiring manual sorting, prices have tripled, so they were not widely imported to Taiwan in the past. However, later, because famous writer Wu Danru publicly praised them greatly, they began to gain some fame in Taiwan. Now Bali's Little Sheep Golden Peaberry Coffee has a distributor in Taiwan (Jin Qiao Trading Co., Ltd.), so you can buy it even without going abroad.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find various famous and lesser-known beans, while also providing online store services. https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473