Indonesian PWN Golden Mandheling Coffee Beans Flavor Profile and Pour-Over Brewing Parameters

FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling coffee beans are both familiar and unfamiliar to many coffee enthusiasts. They are familiar because coffee lovers often praise them, yet unfamiliar because there are too many counterfeit Golden Mandheling coffee beans on the market, making it difficult to taste authentic Golden Mandheling coffee. What exactly are Golden Mandheling coffee beans? Where do authentic FrontStreet Coffee Golden Mandheling coffee beans come from? As consumers, how can we distinguish between real and fake Golden Mandheling? Let FrontStreet Coffee help everyone solve these problems!

What Are Golden Mandheling Coffee Beans?

If you think that Golden Mandheling coffee means large, uniform beans with few defects, you would be completely wrong. FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling coffee beans have quite a story behind them. Initially, a group of Japanese merchants wanted to purchase a batch of high-quality Mandheling coffee beans to bring back to Japan and establish their domestic market. For the unfamiliar Indonesian producing regions, they chose to cooperate with local people. Under this model, the reputation of Golden Mandheling was established, and it became renowned as a representative of high-quality Mandheling.

Later, due to internal reasons, the "local" Pawani Company, responsible for traveling through the North Sumatra producing regions, took the lead in registering the "Golden Mandheling" trademark. The Japanese had to start over with "Top Mandheling" instead.

Therefore, authentic FrontStreet Coffee Golden Mandheling comes from Indonesia's PWN green bean company!

PWN is the abbreviation of Indonesia's famous green bean merchant Pawani Coffee Company, and "Golden Mandheling" was registered as a trademark by PWN Company early on. The five characters of "Golden Mandheling" became PWN's exclusive property. In the past, Golden Mandheling sold on the market rarely mentioned PWN (Pawani), using only large bean size and few defects as selling points. Most of these were Golden Mandheling beans not marked as "PWN Golden Mandheling" - they only referenced PWN Company's screening system for Golden Mandheling coffee beans. Strictly speaking, these Mandheling beans can at most be called "Mandheling G1 18 mesh."

The FrontStreet Coffee Golden Mandheling coffee beans sold by FrontStreet Coffee all come from PWN Coffee Company. To verify whether the purchased FrontStreet Coffee Mandheling coffee beans are authentic, it's quite simple: every bag of Golden Mandheling coffee has its exclusive numbered burlap bag and corresponding certificate. As long as the store can provide these proofs, it can be confirmed as authentic. (Golden Mandheling burlap bags come in only one specification: 30kg bags)

How Does PWN Green Bean Company Screen Golden Mandheling Coffee Beans?

Everyone knows that Indonesian green coffee beans use the wet-hulling processing method. Because semi-hard, semi-soft moist green beans are easily bruised when the pectin and parchment layers are removed, the beans crack open like goat hooves. These are commonly known as "goat hoof beans." Although these goat hoof beans are not defective beans, in PWN Company's view, these goat hoof beans don't look as appealing, so they need to be screened out to give everyone a sense of neat uniformity.

You might think that coffee beans above 18 mesh with no more than 3 defective beans in 300g of green coffee beans, plus selecting out goat hoof beans is already very strict, but PWN Company can achieve even more extreme strictness: after four rounds of manual screening, they are all put into machines for density and color separation screening, finally presenting Mandheling coffee beans with uniform color and consistent bean shape. This means that PWN Green Bean Company made 5 screenings to ensure the outstanding quality of their Golden Mandheling.

What About Non-PWN Company Golden Mandheling Coffee on the Market?

Many Golden Mandheling beans on the market are sold by green bean merchants at higher prices, selecting Mandheling coffee beans above 18 mesh from G1 grade Mandheling coffee beans. Some even screen three times to ensure the appearance closely resembles PWN Golden Mandheling coffee. The appearance can indeed be deceptive, but what about the taste? FrontStreet Coffee obtained several varieties also called Golden Mandheling for blind testing, and all participating baristas could identify FrontStreet Coffee's PWN Golden Mandheling because the cleanliness is something that counterfeit Golden Mandheling cannot imitate.

How to Identify if Your Purchased Golden Mandheling Comes from PWN Company?

Two key points: the factory certificate provided by PWN Company and clear PWN Company logos on the green bean burlap bags of PWN Golden Mandheling. If you're unsure whether you've purchased authentic PWN Mandheling, don't hesitate to ask the seller for the certificate or coffee burlap bags. The FrontStreet Coffee PWN Golden Mandheling burlap bags and certificates sold by FrontStreet Coffee can all be seen at FrontStreet Coffee stores.

What Coffee Variety is FrontStreet Coffee's PWN Golden Mandheling Coffee Beans?

FrontStreet Coffee's PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans use the Ateng coffee variety, which is actually what we commonly hear as Catimor.

Catimor was created in 1959 when the Portuguese moved the Bourbon mutation variety Caturra from Brazil to East Timor to hybridize with Timor, which has Robusta bloodlines. It has extremely high disease resistance and is 3 times more productive than Typica. During the leaf rust crisis, the Indonesian government not only introduced Robusta (whose flavor is quite different from Arabica) but also introduced Timor from East Timbo, intending to replace Typica. Later, through expert investigations, it was found that a batch of Timor seeds introduced by the Indonesian government in 1980 was mixed with some Catimor seeds. These seeds were planted in Aceh, northern Sumatra, and Catimor was first noticed in the central Aceh region, so locals also call Catimor "Ateng," taken from Aceh Tengah (Central Aceh).

How Does FrontStreet Coffee Roast FrontStreet Coffee's PWN Golden Mandheling Coffee Beans?

Yangjia 800N, with 480g bean input. When the roaster reaches 200°C, add the beans with air vent at 3. After 1 minute, adjust heat to 160°C, keeping the air vent unchanged. Roast until 5'40'', when the temperature reaches 148°C, the bean surface turns yellow, the grassy smell completely disappears, and dehydration is complete. Adjust heat to 140°C, change air vent to 4. At 9'40", the bean surface shows ugly wrinkles and black spots, the toast aroma clearly transforms into coffee aroma - this can be defined as the prelude to first crack. At this point, listen carefully for the sound of first crack. At 9'54'', first crack begins, reduce heat to 60°C, set air vent to 5, and discharge at 204.5°C.

How to Brew FrontStreet Coffee's PWN Golden Mandheling Coffee Beans for the Best Taste?

FrontStreet Coffee's understanding of Mandheling coffee brewing is to express a rich, clean mouthfeel, highlighting caramel, chocolate, and its characteristic herbal aromatics, while avoiding any unpleasant bitterness in FrontStreet Coffee's Mandheling black coffee. FrontStreet Coffee will explain the choice of equipment and important brewing parameters, using FrontStreet Coffee's PWN Golden Mandheling for demonstration.

FrontStreet Coffee recommends using freshly roasted coffee beans for brewing to maximize the rich flavors of the coffee. The coffee beans shipped by FrontStreet Coffee are all roasted within 5 days because FrontStreet Coffee deeply understands that coffee bean freshness greatly affects flavor. FrontStreet Coffee's roasting philosophy is "freshly roasted good coffee," ensuring that every customer who places an order receives the freshest coffee when it arrives. The coffee's resting period is about 4-7 days, so when customers receive it, it's at its peak flavor.

For the filter cone choice, FrontStreet Coffee chose the Kono Meimon filter cone. The biggest feature of the Kono filter cone is that its ribs extend from the bottom to the middle, with the upper part being smooth filter cone walls. This way, when the filter paper fits the filter cone, water cannot "sneakily" bypass the coffee grounds, improving the richness of the mouthfeel.

FrontStreet Coffee still uses 15g of coffee grounds. More coffee grounds are not necessarily better, nor are fewer grounds necessarily better - it depends on the filter cone specifications. FrontStreet Coffee uses a 1-2 person filter cone, where 15-20g is a reasonable brewing amount. Brewing with amounts outside this range can be somewhat difficult.

For the brewing water-to-coffee ratio, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using 1:15. Although some might suggest using 1:13 or smaller ratios, FrontStreet Coffee has mentioned in previous articles that concentration and richness are not necessarily related. Moreover, overly strong coffee can cause discomfort. Therefore, using a 1:15 ratio can also effectively express Mandheling's rich mouthfeel.

For coffee grind size, FrontStreet Coffee uses a 70% pass-through rate on a #20 sieve. The grind size for brewing FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling coffee should be slightly coarser than for light-roast coffee beans because Golden Mandheling uses dark roasting, which makes its structure more porous and more likely to absorb water and release coffee substances. If ground to the fineness of light-roast beans, it's easy to brew out bitter, burnt flavors; if ground even coarser, the coffee becomes thin and tasteless, with a watery mouthfeel.

For water temperature selection, FrontStreet Coffee recommends using 87-88°C water for brewing. Similar to the grind size principle, too high water temperature easily produces bitter, burnt flavors, while too low water temperature makes the coffee flat and can produce unpleasant stale sour notes.

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

FrontStreet Coffee PWN Golden Mandheling Flavor Characteristics and Mouthfeel Description:

Sweet herbs, cinnamon-like spices, orange and citrus peel aromas, rich and intense sweetness, creamy walnut chocolate. The fruit acidity is restrained and gentle, with a strong cantaloupe aroma in the fragrance. As the temperature decreases, herbal notes emerge with faint spices, creating a rich mouthfeel with intense sweetness.

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Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

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