What are Indonesian Wet Hulling Coffee Beans? What Flavor Characteristics Do Wet Hulled Coffee Have?

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The vast coffee-growing regions of different countries, their various growing environments, and other factors all influence the flavor of coffee.

Asia possesses vast land areas and hosts many different coffee varieties in its coffee-growing regions. The most famous include the Indonesian production area—where coffee is known for its distinctive smoky sensation, herbal and spicy notes. There are also coffee beans from Vietnam, which have clear fruit flavors and high body. Vietnam primarily produces Robusta coffee beans, a variety that is predominantly bitter with slightly less aroma.

Of course, there are many lesser-known but promising regions for producing excellent coffee. Coffee from Papua New Guinea offers juicy acidity reminiscent of bayberries, noticeable sweetness, and unique spicy flavors. The Philippines, Thailand, Fiji, Bali, and other locations are all coffee-producing regions with distinctive flavors.

Coffee from several major islands in Indonesia is very famous, including: Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, Bali, and others.

Sumatran Mandheling Coffee

The famous coffee beans from Sumatra—Mandheling—are the most familiar to everyone. The reason Mandheling can have different flavors, besides climate and geographical location, the special post-processing method—Wet-Hulling—is also one of the important factors. Simply put, Wet-Hulling means removing the parchment when the beans are still halfway through drying, with a moisture content as high as 30%-50%, and then continuing to let them dry to solve the problem of overly long drying time, completing the process in just four days.

Wet-Hulling Processing Method

Wet-Hulling is Indonesia's traditional processing method. After the coffee cherries are pulped, they are washed with clean water to remove impurities and placed in a sealed environment to ferment for 12-24 hours. Afterwards, the parchment beans are directly hulled while still having high moisture content, and the green coffee beans are then dried directly until the moisture content stabilizes. Although Wet-Hulling processing has risks, properly processed Wet-Hulling can simultaneously enhance body and cleanliness, differentiating it from the herbal flavors typical of Indonesian beans. They also have a secret, which lies in their Dry Mill. Traditional Aceh coffee is mostly exported from the port of Medan, so their Dry Mills are all set up in Medan. After coffee is processed in Aceh, it often needs to be sent to Medan's warehouses for final processing and packaging. However, Medan's climate is consistently hot and humid, which is the enemy of coffee. Under such environmental conditions for just a few days, the quality and lifespan of the coffee will be greatly reduced!

Quality Characteristics of Mandheling

However, the high proportion of defective beans in Mandheling is a common problem, with extremely high rates of insect damage and partial acidity. Based on our experience, even green beans marked as G1 grade still have very many defective beans. Only batches of Golden Mandheling grade or above, or those that have been specially hand-selected, can meet the standards of specialty coffee.

High-quality Mandheling should have "herbal, licorice" aroma, 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 retain good body without stimulating acidity and bitterness is something that roasters must manage. Common undesirable flavors in Mandheling include: earthy flavors from improper processing, complex and unclean tastes caused by defective beans, or bitterness and sharp acidity from improper roasting.

FrontStreet Coffee's [Tiger Mandheling] is very clean in flavor and texture, with good caramel sweetness and cocoa notes.

Brewing Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's brewing parameters recommendation:

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

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473