The Mystery of Sumatra Coffee Varieties: The Real Reasons Behind Sumatra Coffee Bean Price Differences

A Typica Variety? The Mystery of Sumatra Coffee Beans - Mandheling Coffee Varieties

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Indonesia's main coffee producing regions include the islands of Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi, with the "Mandheling" coffee from Sumatra being the most renowned.

Mandheling, also known as "Sumatra Coffee," comes from different regions: coffee from Lake Tawar in the north can be called Aceh Coffee or Lake Tawar Coffee, while coffee from the Lintong and Lake Toba areas can be called Mandheling.

Mandheling has a rich, heavy flavor with intense body and vibrant, lively characteristics. It's neither astringent nor acidic, allowing its body and bitterness to shine through. The appearance of Mandheling coffee beans might be considered the ugliest, but coffee enthusiasts say that the less attractive Sumatra coffee beans look, the better, richer, and smoother their taste becomes.

We've collected four types of Mandheling:

Gold Mandheling

Sumatra Island, Mandehling Longberry, Timtim Belangele

Lintong Mandheling Grade -1

Emerald Mandheling (from Aceh, Sumatra)

Image above: Gold Mandheling raw beans

Image above: Ma Mian Mandheling full natural sun-dried raw beans, which are Arabica and Robusta hybrids, known as Timor, called Timtim variety in Indonesia.

TimTim -

This refers to Timor Hybrid, which translates to Timor Hybrid Variety - a hybrid of Arabica and Robusta. The Catimor variety we're familiar with is created by further hybridization with it.

Tim Tim - Ma Mian Mandheling Longberry

Tim Tim is a bean from Indonesia. Due to its elongated shape, many people call it "Ma Mian bean" (Horse Face bean), while others call it Longberry Mandheling. Actually, Tim Tim is not a pure variety bean but a variety naturally hybridized from Arabica coffee trees and Robusta coffee trees. This variety was discovered on Timor Island in the 1940s and was cultivated due to its natural disease resistance. In the Americas, this variety is called Hybrido de Timor, abbreviated as Tim Tim. In Indonesia, this variety is also known as Bor Bor.

Image above: Lintong Mandheling G1. Although graded as Grade-1, it still cannot overcome the high defect rate characteristic of Indonesian beans, with about 8% defective beans.

Image above: Emerald Mandheling (from Aceh, Sumatra), 19 screen size+, with raw beans that are green, plump, and crystal clear, just like emeralds.

Sumatra Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted Sumatra Mandheling coffee beans offer excellent guarantees in both brand and quality. More importantly, they provide extremely high value-for-money. A 227-gram pack costs only 89 yuan. Calculating based on 15 grams of coffee powder per cup, one pack can make 15 cups of coffee, with each cup costing only about 6 yuan. Compared to coffee shops selling cups for dozens of yuan, this is truly a conscientious recommendation.

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473