What Flavors Does Wet-Hulled Coffee Have? What Are the Characteristics of Indonesian Wet-Hulled Coffee Beans? What is Wet Hulling?

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What is Coffee Processing?

What we commonly call coffee beans are actually seeds; the fruit of coffee is known as Coffee Cherry. Coffee beans aren't beans? Then what are they...

Each coffee cherry contains two coffee beans, with only 5% of coffee cherries containing just one coffee bean. In this case, the resulting coffee beans are called peaberries.

What are the Structures Outside Coffee Beans?

Exocarp (Outer Skin)

Pulp

Pectin

Parchment/Hull

Silver Skin

To obtain precious coffee beans, one must remove their outer layers.

In short, the process of stripping away these outer layers is what's known as processing methods.

Wet-Hulled Method

In Indonesia, due to climate conditions, the wet-hulled method is mostly used to process coffee cherries.

The vast majority of coffee trees in Sumatra are grown by small farmers. After harvesting, they first remove the skin and pulp at home. After removing the skin and pulp, they place them in plastic buckets or small fermentation tanks for a brief overnight fermentation, then remove the pectin and reduce moisture content to approximately 30-40%.

In this state, the parchment coffee beans are sold from small farmers to exporters' processing plants, so the coffee beans are transported in a moist condition to the processing plant. This process may take up to a day. This means that under these circumstances, the coffee beans continue to ferment and develop unique flavor profiles.

When they reach the sun-drying processing plant, to prevent this fermentation state from continuing, moisture must be removed quickly. Therefore, hulling machines are used to forcefully remove the parchment layer, allowing the green coffee beans inside to quickly lose moisture in the sun-drying area.

Simply put, this involves hulling the beans when they are still at a high moisture content of 30-50%, halfway through the drying process, then continuing to dry them to solve the problem of excessive drying time. The entire process can be completed in about four days.

Sumatra's wet-hulled method is characterized by deep, woody notes, earthy and medicinal flavors, with relatively low fruit acidity.

High-quality Mandheling should have "herbal and licorice" aromas, with some acidity that shouldn't be too strong. In particularly high-quality regions, it can even have caramel-like sweetness, with high body being its greatest characteristic. In roasting, how to control and maintain good body without stimulating acidity and bitterness is something that roasters must manage. Common defective flavors in Mandheling include: improper processing causing earthy flavors, complex and unclean tastes from defective beans, or bitterness and sharp acidity from improper roasting.

FrontStreet Coffee's "Tiger Mandheling" is very clean in flavor and mouthfeel, with excellent caramel sweetness and cocoa notes.

FrontStreet Coffee's Brewing Recommendations:

KONO/88°C/1:14/Time: one minute and fifty seconds.

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473