Unconventional Among Sumatra Coffee Beans: Aged Mandheling Coffee Bean Prices, Characteristics and Stories

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Indonesia's Mandheling coffee is rich and mellow, representing the full-bodied category of coffees. However, Mandheling coffee has a rather polarized audience—those who love it cannot get enough of it, while those who dislike it keep their distance. The unique herbal plant flavor in Mandheling coffee has become a characteristic that fascinates some coffee enthusiasts.

FrontStreet Coffee has encountered many steadfast Mandheling coffee lovers. Even when introduced to several other full-bodied, low-acidity coffee beans such as Brazil's Queen Estate Natural Yellow Bourbon and Jamaica Blue Mountain, they ultimately chose Indonesia's Sumatran Mandheling coffee beans.

The History of Indonesian Coffee

Despite Indonesian Mandheling coffee's popularity for over half a century, Indonesia is not the origin of coffee. Like many coffee-producing countries, coffee cultivation in Indonesia is inseparable from European colonial activities. In the seventeenth century, coffee became popular in Europe, and supply couldn't meet demand. To capture a larger consumer market, some European countries brought coffee seeds or seedlings to their colonies for cultivation.

Among these, the Dutch East India Company twice transplanted coffee to Indonesia. Finally, on the second attempt, with favorable timing, human factors, and geographical conditions aligning, coffee trees took root and thrived on Java Island, subsequently spreading to Sumatra and Sulawesi.

However, in the early twentieth century, coffee leaf rust swept through, devastating the coffee trees on Java Island. Later, they had to switch to cultivating Robusta coffee trees with stronger disease resistance. Today, Indonesia has become a major coffee-producing country, with its Arabica coffee bean production consistently ranking first in Asia.

Sumatra Coffee Regions

Indonesia's main coffee-producing region is located on Sumatra Island. Coffee produced in Sumatra is also one of the main types in the specialty coffee industry. Sumatran coffee is renowned for its unique flavor characteristics, low acidity, richness, and special aroma. Mandheling coffee beans are among the most popular Sumatran coffee beans in the world.

Arabica coffee beans in Sumatra are mainly concentrated in the northwest of the island. According to different growing environments, they can be divided into the Aceh region in North Sumatra and the Lintong region around Lake Toba in North Sumatra Province.

Lintong vs. Aceh Regions

The traditional producing area of Mandheling coffee beans is located in the Lintong region. Combined with the unique local wet-hulling process, Mandheling coffee from the Lintong region has a heavy mouthfeel, with unique herbal aromas and obvious caramel sweetness.

As a relatively new Mandheling coffee-producing region, Aceh imported a batch of Arabica coffee trees from North Sumatra Province in 1924. Subsequently, coffee production in the Aceh region increased year by year, even surpassing the traditional Lintong region. However, as global warming intensifies, scientific research shows that areas suitable for coffee cultivation in the traditional Lintong region will significantly shrink or even disappear in the next thirty years. Meanwhile, the Aceh region has survived this global warming disaster and become the winner, replacing the Lintong region's status.

On FrontStreet Coffee's bean shelves, there are Mandheling coffee beans from both the Aceh and Lintong regions. However, some may wonder: since both are Mandheling coffee, what are the differences between them?

Through cupping and comparison of the two Mandheling coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee believes that the flavor and mouthfeel of Aceh region Mandheling coffee are brighter, with less heavy herbal plant flavors.

Of course, such differences are not only due to different local growing environments but are also closely related to post-harvest processing methods and production standards.

Wet-Hulling Process

Sumatra experiences year-round rainfall with a humid climate, making it difficult to meet the sun-drying duration required for the natural processing method. During sun-drying, coffee cherries might be directly ruined due to rain exposure or over-fermentation. Additionally, limited local economic conditions prevent sufficient investment in the washed processing method. This led to the development of the wet-hulling method.

After selected coffee cherries have their pulp and skin removed, the parchment beans with their sticky mucilage layer are briefly washed and then placed in water tanks for fermentation. The longer the fermentation time, the stronger the acidity. Therefore, some processing plants choose to skip the fermentation step entirely to create Mandheling coffee beans with extremely low acidity, directly spreading the sticky parchment beans evenly for drying. This way, Mandheling's acidity is inhibited, and the mouthfeel's viscosity is enhanced.

When the coffee beans are still in a semi-dry, semi-wet state, machines are used to hull them. This step generates excessive heat that accelerates the aging of coffee beans, creating special aromas like wood and earth in the final product. Meanwhile, in this state, the coffee beans are relatively soft, and under the external force of machines, they are easily cracked, presenting a "sheep's hoof" appearance.

Golden Mandheling

Unlike regular Mandheling coffee beans, PWN's production of Golden Mandheling follows a strict set of standards. Only full, complete beans of 18 screen size or larger are selected, with fewer than three defective beans per 300-gram sample, achieving the highest G1 grade. Then, three rounds of manual hand-selection ensure complete removal of defective beans, making Golden Mandheling's flavor brighter, mouthfeel cleaner, and sweetness more intense. Under strict production standards, the exceptional quality of Golden Mandheling has made it synonymous with Mandheling. Because of this, its production is relatively scarce, and some merchants attempt to use Mandheling coffee beans of the same grade to impersonate PWN Golden Mandheling and sell them at high prices.

FrontStreet Coffee has obtained multiple Golden Mandheling samples for blind tasting. FrontStreet Coffee's baristas can accurately identify PWN Golden Mandheling because its mouthfeel cleanliness is unparalleled. For ordinary consumers, this approach is somewhat difficult. To identify genuine PWN Golden Mandheling, you can ask merchants to provide relevant raw bean sacks and certificates. Both types of proof can also be found at FrontStreet Coffee's physical stores.

On the label of PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans sold at FrontStreet Coffee, the variety is marked as Ateng. Compared to familiar Typica and Bourbon, what variety is Ateng? In fact, Ateng is a general term for Catimor coffee widely planted on Sumatra Island. This variety possesses both Robusta and Arabica genes and can perform excellently in cuppings under certain conditions.

Aged Mandheling

When it comes to wine, everyone generally believes that the older it gets, the better, hence the term "aged wine." The same applies to aged coffee. Aged Mandheling is the most outstanding among aged coffees. In fact, this unique flavor wasn't intentionally created. Indonesia was once a Dutch colony, and during the colonial period, Indonesia continuously supplied coffee beans to Europe. To ensure uninterrupted supply, coffee beans were appropriately stored. However, due to external factors such as long transportation distances and erosion by sea winds, by the time the coffee beans reached Europe, they had developed another flavor—this was the origin of aged flavor.

Fortunately, at that time, European colonists were amazed by this flavor and quickly accepted and promoted this processing method. Today, the aging process for Mandheling is quite mature. Coffee beans first undergo wet-hulling (wet-hulling involves sun-drying with parchment for 2-3 days to 20-24% moisture content during the regular washing process, then hulling the parchment to dry the raw beans to 12-13% moisture content), and then are sealed in warehouses. The warehouse environment must be cool and ventilated, and the beans must be regularly turned to prevent mold and decay. They are stored for 2-3 years, during which the coffee beans' acidity gradually diminishes and converts to sugar content, and their color becomes deeper, mostly yellowish-brown or dark brown, making them highly recognizable.

Aged Mandheling Profile

Region: Sumatra
Altitude: 1500 meters
Variety: Caturra, Typica
Processing: Wet-hulled
Flavor: Ripe pu-erh tea, caramel, herbal, chocolate, with low acidity

FrontStreet Coffee uses a medium-dark roast level for Mandheling coffee beans. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using the following parameters when brewing:

Brewing Parameters

Dripper: KONO
Water Temperature: 88°C
Coffee Amount: 15 grams
Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: Chinese standard #20 sieve, 70% pass-through

First, pour 30 grams of hot water for a 30-second bloom. Then, inject with a fine water stream from the center point and slowly circle to 125 grams. When the water level in the dripper drops to just above the coffee bed, continue circling and pouring to 225 grams. The total extraction time is approximately 2 minutes.

For more specialty coffee knowledge, please follow the WeChat official account: FrontStreet Coffee

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