The Origin Story of Indonesian Sumatran Mandheling Coffee Name History - What is Golden Mandheling Coffee Bean Price Characteristics

Mandheling coffee beans can be said to be the signature of Indonesian coffee beans. In many cases, the name "Mandheling" itself represents the quality of Indonesian coffee beans. FrontStreet Coffee only stocks Mandheling coffee as a representative of Indonesian coffee beans. Its flavor is rich in chocolate and nutty notes, and importantly, it has a heavy body that cannot be matched by other coffees.

However, many friends are often confused about why Mandheling is called "Mandheling" and what the story behind this name is. Today, FrontStreet Coffee is here to tell you this story.

The Origin of the Mandheling Name

The name Mandheling is a transliteration of the Mandheling ethnic group in Indonesia. During World War II, when Japan occupied Indonesia, a Japanese soldier tasted an incredibly fragrant coffee at a coffee shop. He asked the owner for the coffee's name, but the owner misunderstood and thought he was asking about his nationality, so he replied: "Mandheling." After the war, the Japanese soldier recalled the "Mandheling" he had drunk in Indonesia and entrusted an Indonesian coffee exporter to ship 15 tons to Japan. It became surprisingly popular, and the name Mandheling spread from there.

The Flavor Profile of Mandheling Coffee

Mandheling coffee is considered one of the world's most mellow coffees. When tasting Mandheling, you can feel a distinct smoothness on your tongue. It also has a lower acidity, but this acidity can still be clearly tasted. The jumping micro-acidity mixes with the most intense aroma, allowing you to easily experience the lively factors within the gentle richness. Additionally, this coffee has a faint earthy aroma, which some describe as the fragrance of herbal plants.

Golden Mandheling

Golden Mandheling is not a grade but a trademark registered by Indonesian company P.W.N. (N.V. Pawani Medan), founded in 1957, which exports Indonesian products including coffee, rubber, cinnamon, cloves, and patchouli oil. It was the first company to export coffee from North Sumatra Island and the first to make "Mandheling coffee" famous in Japan. Since 1977, the company has focused on exporting high-quality coffee beans: Sumatran Arabica Mandheling Grade 1 and Robusta AP-I Grade 2, with exports primarily to Japan, Taiwan, and the United States. Exports to Japan and Taiwan account for over 95%. In Japan and Taiwan, "PWN" has become synonymous with "quality assurance."

The company owns the "Golden Mandheling" trademark, so Japanese companies had to register the "Gold Top Mandheling" trademark instead. Mandheling refers to semi-dried or sun-dried beans from the Lindong mountainous area at 900-1200 meters elevation around Lake Toba in north-central Sumatra. FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling undergoes four rounds of manual selection, making it a higher grade than regular Mandheling with larger beans. The uniformly sized Golden Mandheling beans created another wave of market demand, driving even Europe and America crazy for them.

Because the quality of FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling is exceptionally superior, its selling price is much higher than regular Mandheling, which is also why the market is flooded with counterfeit Golden Mandheling.

FrontStreet Coffee believes that authentic Golden Mandheling must be a product of Indonesia's PWN Coffee Company (the Golden Mandheling trademark is owned by PWN Company). Imported Golden Mandheling raw coffee beans should come with a certificate of authenticity from PWN Company (for verifying authenticity). If a seller cannot provide information about the source of Golden Mandheling raw beans (certificate or burlap bags), then you need to be careful in identifying them.

FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling coffee beans come from Aceh Gayo Mountain, Grade G1, using a 3-stage manual selection process to ensure large, plump beans (19 mesh) with minimal defects. They exhibit a very clean, rich mouthfeel and high sweetness of high-quality Mandheling coffee.

How to Brew FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling

So how should FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling coffee be brewed to taste delicious?

FrontStreet Coffee's understanding of brewing Mandheling coffee is to express a rich yet clean mouthfeel, highlighting caramel, chocolate, and its signature herbal aroma flavors, while avoiding unpleasant bitterness. FrontStreet Coffee will explain the equipment choices and important brewing parameters, using FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling for demonstration.

Brewing Guidelines

FrontStreet Coffee suggests using freshly roasted coffee beans for brewing, as this allows you to experience the rich flavors of coffee to the greatest extent. The coffee beans shipped by FrontStreet Coffee are all roasted within 5 days because FrontStreet Coffee deeply understands that the freshness of coffee beans greatly affects the flavor. FrontStreet Coffee's roasting philosophy is "freshly roasted good coffee," ensuring that every customer who places an order receives the freshest coffee possible. The resting period for coffee beans is around 4-7 days, so when customers receive their order, the coffee is at its optimal flavor.

For the choice of filter cup, FrontStreet Coffee chose the Kono Meimon filter cup. The biggest characteristic of the Kono filter cup is that its ribs extend from the bottom to the middle, with the upper part being smooth filter cup walls. This way, when the filter paper adheres to the filter cup, water cannot "sneak" around the coffee powder and escape, increasing the richness of the mouthfeel.

FrontStreet Coffee still uses 15g of coffee grounds. The amount of coffee grounds is not necessarily better when more or when less - it depends on the specific filter cup specifications. FrontStreet Coffee uses a 1-2 person filter cup, where 15-20g of coffee grounds is a reasonable brewing amount. Brewing with amounts outside this range can be somewhat difficult.

For the brewing ratio, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using 1:15. Although some might suggest using 1:13 or an even smaller ratio, FrontStreet Coffee has mentioned in previous articles that concentration and richness are not necessarily correlated. Moreover, excessive concentration can cause discomfort. Therefore, using a 1:15 ratio can still effectively express Mandheling's rich mouthfeel.

For coffee grind size, FrontStreet Coffee uses a 70% pass rate on a #20 sieve screen. The grind size for brewing FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling coffee should be slightly coarser than light-roasted coffee beans because FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling uses dark roast, which has a more porous structure and more easily absorbs water to release coffee substances. If ground to the fineness of light-roasted beans, it's easy to brew out burnt bitterness; if ground even coarser, it will make the coffee thin and tasteless, with a mouthfeel as thin as water.

For water temperature, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using 87-88°C water for brewing. Following the same principle as grind size, excessively high water temperatures can easily produce burnt bitterness, while too low water temperatures make the coffee taste flat and can produce unpleasant stale acidity.

The brewing method uses a three-stage pouring approach. Dividing into three stages of pouring can better express the rich mouthfeel of FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling coffee and the sweetness of caramel. The specific water distribution is: first stage bloom pour of 30ml, completely wetting the coffee grounds for degassing to better extract coffee flavor substances in subsequent stages; second stage pour of 100ml; final stage pour of 95ml to enhance the coffee's sweetness.

Brewed this way, FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling coffee overall exhibits a rich, full mouthfeel with caramel sweetness and chocolate, nutty flavors.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473