Golden Mandheling Pour-over Parameter Recommendations_How to Drink Golden Mandheling_How Much Does a Cup of Golden Mandheling Cost

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Golden Mandheling Pour-Over Parameters

Drip Method

V60, medium-dark roast, 15g of coffee, small Fuji ghost tooth grinder setting 4, water temperature 86-88°C, 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, bloom for 25s, extraction time 2:10

Volcano Pour-Over

V60, medium-dark roast, 18g of coffee, small Fuji ghost tooth grinder setting 4, water temperature 92°C, 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, no bloom, medium water circular pour, extraction time 2 minutes

Mandheling Coffee

Mandheling coffee is produced in Sumatra, Asian Indonesia, also known as "Sumatra Coffee." It features a very rich flavor—fragrant, bitter, and mellow, with a slight sweetness.

Mandheling

Rich and solid texture, herbal medicinal notes, with pleasant acidity, strong aftertaste, and solid mellow mouthfeel. Aromatic flavor, moderate acidity, rich sweetness that is intriguing, suitable for dark roasting, emitting a rich aroma. The gentleman of coffee—Sumatra Mandheling. Mandheling is a premium coffee bean grown in mountainous regions at elevations of 750-1500 meters, with the highest quality first-grade Mandheling produced in Takengon and Sidikalang. Due to its irreplaceable mellow flavor, Japan's largest coffee company UCC Ueshima Coffee Co. partnered with renowned Sumatran coffee merchant PT Gunung Lintong in 1995 to operate their first coffee plantation in Asia, demonstrating how important Mandheling's position is in the coffee world.

Some say Mandheling is heavy and intense, while others find it gentle and mild. Mandheling has always expressed its most unique sweetness through its most distinctive bitterness, much like the bitterness and sweetness of life. No amount of sugar can completely mask that bitterness—at first taste, it's truly striking. However, the captivating aroma it emits makes us uncontrollably fascinated with it. Its bitterness is like the thorns beside a flower—making one self-aware, while its fragrance is refreshing. Mandheling's bitterness won't make you frustrated; instead, it makes you feel more clear-headed. Before encountering real pain, Mandheling is just an ordinary bitter-tasting beverage, just a liquid to refresh you, just a tool to make you pause temporarily; when you truly encounter pain, it will smile and tell you: "Because love is refined from bitterness." Letting you calm down and savor it carefully.

Golden Mandheling Coffee Beans

Mandheling is a premium among Indonesian coffees, and Golden Mandheling is the finest among Mandhelings. Golden Mandheling is obtained through careful manual selection—full, vibrant Mandheling coffee beans, truly an outstanding beauty among coffees. In fact, to improve the high defect rate issue in Mandheling, the Japanese began adopting strict quality control through careful selection long ago, going through four manual selections to eliminate defective beans. Unfortunately, "golden mandheling" was trademarked by Indonesia's Pawani Coffee Company, making Golden Mandheling exclusive to PWN. PWN's is truly Golden Mandheling in the real sense—the Golden Mandheling stamped with PWN's mark is also a guarantee of quality, with PWN's Golden Mandheling undergoing three manual selections and one machine selection, resulting in very beautiful beans. PWN Company trademarked Golden Mandheling, meaning only Golden Mandheling produced by PWN Company can be considered true "Golden Mandheling." Many on the market not produced by PWN Company but labeled as Golden Mandheling should actually be called Premium Mandheling. "Golden Mandheling" is not aged coffee—it's simply a product name created by the company.

Differences Between Mandheling and Golden Mandheling

Some coffee friends have asked, as a coffee beginner, what's the difference between Golden Mandheling and Mandheling G1—I really can't taste it. For professional-level coffee connoisseurs and taste-sensitive coffee friends, if tasting these two coffees simultaneously, the contrast will be very obvious—the sweetness, cleanliness, mellow texture, and wild spice flavors of Golden Mandheling are superior to G1, which is also one reason why Golden Mandheling is much more expensive than G1.

Taste Profile

Golden Mandheling tastes cleaner than Lindong Mandheling—the original herbal, earthy, and woody flavors of Mandheling are almost gone, but the caramel sweetness is stronger, and the fruit acidity is brighter and more elegant. Generally, Lindong Mandheling is best roasted until after second crack to effectively reduce off-flavors, but Golden Mandheling has good clarity and sweetness whether taken out before or after second crack, offering more room for roasting interpretation.

Aged Golden Mandheling

Aged coffee actually has a long history in Indonesia. Because early shipping wasn't so developed, transporting coffee from Indonesia to other countries took a considerable amount of time. Over time, originally moisture-rich fresh coffee beans gradually dried, and the sea breeze added a rather special flavor. Due to modern shipping advances greatly reducing transport time, coffee with such special flavors has become a specially processed coffee bean. Processing aged beans is a technique that requires close monitoring during the aging process, with standard requirements for warehouse humidity and temperature, and regular turning of the raw coffee beans to prevent differences in humidity between top and bottom layers or mold that would cause spoilage. The aging process isn't about losing flavor but creating another kind of flavor—a pleasant one.

Taste Profile

Aged Mandheling—characterized by honey-like sweetness. Successful aged beans eliminate Mandheling's less elegant acidity. Acidic and astringent components mature into sugars, making the coffee rounder and sweeter when brewed. Failed aged Mandheling is like coffee zombies—difficult to drink.

Sumatra Mandheling

The most famous coffee-producing regions in Asia are the islands of the Malay Archipelago: Sumatra, Java, and Kalimantan. Among these, Sumatra Mandheling coffee from Indonesia's Sumatra island is most renowned. It has two famous varieties: Sumatra Mandheling DP First Class and Reserve Sumatra Mandheling. Sumatra Mandheling DP First Class has a long aftertaste with a wild fragrance—the unique earthy flavor of primeval forests. Actually, Mandheling's richness has a very masculine quality. Premium quality First Class Mandheling coffee has very light acidity, like the slight sourness of flowers and fruits. Besides the characteristic richness of Indonesian coffee, it also has a bitter-sweet taste, deeply loved by those who enjoy dark roast coffee; Reserve Sumatra Mandheling is called "Reserve" because it's stored in cellars for three years before export. But reserve coffee is definitely not stale coffee—rather, it's specially processed slightly pale coffee that's richer, with reduced acidity but increased body, longer aftertaste, and sometimes carries strong spice flavors, sometimes pungent notes, sometimes walnut, and sometimes chocolate.

Green Beans

Mandheling coffee beans are relatively large with hard bean structure. They are prone to defects during cultivation. After harvesting, they usually undergo strict manual selection. If quality control isn't strict enough, it can easily result in inconsistent quality. Additionally, different roast levels directly affect taste, making it a controversial single-origin coffee.

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Golden Mandheling semi-washed green beans

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Horse-face Mandheling fully natural sun-dried green beans, a hybrid of Arabica and Robusta called Timor, known as timtim variety in Indonesia.

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Lindong Mandheling G1—though Grade-1, still can't escape the characteristic high defect rate of Indonesian beans, with about 8% defective beans

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Emerald Mandheling (from Aceh, Sumatra), 19+ screen size, with individual green, plump, crystal-clear green beans like emeralds

Subverting Your Understanding of Mandheling—Traditional Wet Hulling, Natural, and Honey Processed Mandheling

Traditional Wet Hulling Method

Each year, March-May and September-December are the seasons for harvesting Mandheling in Sumatra. Currently, most coffee farmers only harvest fully red coffee cherries. After collecting coffee cherries in the morning, they remove the skin and pulp in the afternoon, turning them into wet parchment beans—what we call parchment coffee. Then the parchment beans are put into water tanks to remove floating defective beans.

Sumatra's natural environment is excellent, and most water used is mountain spring water. Next, the dense beans that sank are taken out and placed in barrels for dry fermentation, allowing the pectin and sugars to fully ferment to enhance flavor. Fermentation time is usually between 12-36 hours, depending on specific conditions. Then they are sun-dried for 1-2 days. When moisture content reaches 35-40%, the coffee beans are collected into woven bags, typically 40kg and 80kg per bag, and sent to coffee processing plants for hulling. The hulling process uses a hulling machine to grind off the parchment shell, followed by more drying until moisture content reaches approximately 12%-15%.

Wet hulling can also result in higher defective bean rates than washed and natural methods because the beans come into direct contact with air when the fruit skin is removed during processing.

Natural Processing Method

1. Bean Selection: Place freshly harvested coffee beans in water tanks. Mature, imperfect beans will sink, while immature and overripe imperfect beans will float and can be removed.
2. Drying: Place the selected mature imperfect fruits on a patio for 5-6 days of sun exposure until completely dry. At this point, the raw imperfect beans turn dark brown with 13% moisture content.
3. Hulling: After drying, the imperfect skin becomes brittle and easily removable by machinery. Commercial farms have their own hulling facilities, while small farms entrust processing centers to handle it.
4. Selection and Grading: Defective beans are identified and removed manually or mechanically, followed by grading standards that divide coffee beans into various quality grades. Premium coffee enters the specialty coffee market.
5. Polishing: Hulling only removes one layer of the bean's exterior. At this point, the silver skin still remains on the seed's outer layer and must be mechanically removed.

Sumatra Lindong region, at 1000-1500 meters elevation, where Wahana Company purchases coffee fruits grown by small farmers and manually harvested. Natural processed Mandheling with very rich melon and fruit aromas. Indonesian natural Mandheling emits unprecedented elegance—people comment on its obvious fruit acidity, grassy fragrance, and refreshing, slightly sweet taste.

Honey Processing Method

Honey processed Mandheling, after purchasing coffee fruits from farmers that have passed quality inspection, is first shade-dried to reduce moisture content. Then it undergoes very precise, constant-temperature machine drying for ten days, allowing the fruit juice, pectin, and rich flavors to fully ferment the parchment beans, turning the coffee fruits into unique honey-processed dried fruits similar to preserves, followed by storage treatment.

Coffee honey fruits are stored until orders are received before removing the fruit skin and pulp, to avoid flavor being affected by time and Maillard reactions, allowing the honey fruits to absorb the fruit acids, sugars, and flavors from the pulp for longer. This distinctive processing method completely changes the original Indonesian bean flavors and adds very special aromas. If you weren't told beforehand that this was a Mandheling coffee, you would definitely mistake it for an African bean, while still retaining Mandheling's rich and smooth texture.

Pour-Over Parameters

Drip Method

V60, medium-dark roast, 15g of coffee, small Fuji ghost tooth grinder setting 4, water temperature 86-88°C, 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, bloom for 25s, extraction time 2:10

Volcano Pour-Over

V60, medium-dark roast, 18g of coffee, small Fuji ghost tooth grinder setting 4, water temperature 92°C, 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, no bloom, medium water circular pour, extraction time 2 minutes

Recommended Golden Mandheling Coffee Bean Brands

Indonesian PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans roasted by FrontStreet Coffee offer full guarantees in both brand and quality. More importantly, they offer excellent value—a half-pound (227g) bag costs only around 89 yuan. Calculating at 15g per cup, one bag can make 15 cups of coffee, with each cup costing less than 6 yuan. Compared to cafés selling coffee for dozens of yuan per cup, this is truly a conscientious recommendation.

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