Characteristics and Story of Golden Mandheling G1 Coffee Beans - Golden Mandheling's Cleaner Taste than Lintong Mandheling

Understanding Indonesian Coffee Quality: A Comprehensive Guide

Indonesia's coffee cultivation journey began in the 17th century with the Dutch, and today, Indonesian coffee holds a significant position in the international market. Due to historical reasons, Indonesia's coffee varieties have developed complex relationships, and its green bean grading system remains largely unknown. FrontStreet Coffee will now explain how to distinguish the quality of Indonesian coffee.

Why Are Indonesian Coffee Varieties So Complex?

The complexity of today's Indonesian coffee variety system stems from the impact of leaf rust disease. Most of the Typica varieties originally planted by the Dutch withered due to infection. To maintain coffee production, disease-resistant coffee varieties had to be imported from surrounding areas. Varieties such as Timor, Catimor, Caturra, S795, and Robusta entered Indonesia under these circumstances. Due to the generally low education level of Indonesian coffee farmers, these varieties acquired many localized names when distributed to farmers for cultivation. For example, what we commonly call Timor variety is known as Tim Tim or Bor Bor in Indonesia.

Facing such a complex system of green bean varieties, Indonesia finds it difficult to name coffee using a single variety. Due to historically famous production regions, coffee from Java Island is generally called Java coffee, Arabica coffee from North Sumatra is called Mandheling coffee, and the most famous from Sulawesi Island is Toraja coffee, named after the ethnic group skilled in coffee cultivation on the island. Of course, there's also Kopi Luwak, named for its unique processing method.

PWN Company's Golden Mandheling coffee beans are selected from the Gayo Mountain region in Aceh Province, the northernmost part of Sumatra. The variety is Ateng, which is the name given to Catimor after its introduction to Aceh for cultivation. Ateng is actually an abbreviation for central Aceh.

Indonesia's Complex Green Bean Grading Standards

Such a complex green bean variety system has also led to Indonesia's intricate coffee grade standards. These are generally based primarily on defect count, with coffee bean size as a secondary factor.

According to defect rate, they are divided into 6 levels from G1 to G6.

Coffee Bean Size Indicators

Some higher-quality Indonesian coffees also indicate coffee bean size, such as Golden Mandheling which is marked as 17/18 mesh.

Number of Sorting Passes

In addition to the above grading standards, some premium Indonesian coffees also undergo manual sorting, which is reflected in the labeling as Double Picked or Triple Picked. This is because Indonesia commonly uses the wet-hulling processing method, during which defective beans easily appear. The more sorting passes, the better the coffee quality.

In December 2020, FrontStreet Coffee received a batch of Golden Mandheling coffee from the new October harvest season. The packaging bag contains basic information about the coffee beans. Let's explore this together.

Understanding the Packaging Information

PWN: This is the logo of Pawani Company

GOLDEN MANDHELING: Golden Mandheling

TRIPLE PICKED: Triple picked, reflecting its excellent quality

COFFEE ARABICA: Arabica coffee, referring to the coffee bean variety. PWN previously selected coffee beans from the Lintong region (variety was Typica), but in recent years, due to coffee farmers in the Lintong area grafting tree varieties for yield and profit, quality significantly declined. Therefore, they now select the production area in the Gayo Mountains of Aceh, with the variety being Ateng.

GRADE 1: This is the standard of Indonesia's green bean grading system, where G1 is the highest grade, with total defects in green beans less than 11.

PROD.OF INDONESIA: Product of Indonesia, produced in Indonesia

30 KGS NET: Including the sack, total 20 kilograms

EXP: 10.2024: Expiration date October 2024, which also confirms that this batch is from the October 2020 harvest season.

FrontStreet Coffee Roasting Analysis

Golden Mandheling has excellent herbal aromas, with more intense caramel sweetness, and relatively calm and elegant fruit acidity. It offers rich sweetness, thick body, and wild spice flavors. Generally, Lintong Mandheling is best roasted until after the second crack to effectively reduce off-flavors, but Golden Mandheling already has good clarity and sweetness before the second crack, allowing for broader roasting interpretation.

Heat the drum to 200°C and load the beans, with the air damper set to 3. After 1 minute, reduce heat to 160°C, keeping the air damper unchanged. At 5'40", when the temperature reaches 148°C, the bean surface turns yellow, grassy aroma completely disappears, dehydration is complete. Reduce heat to 140, and change air damper to 4.

At 9'40", ugly wrinkles and black spots appear on the bean surface, and the toast aroma clearly transforms to coffee aroma, which 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, fully open the air damper (be very careful when adjusting heat, don't reduce it to the point where there's no cracking sound), and discharge at 204.5°C.

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Guide

This brewing method highlights the rich, clean, and aromatic characteristics of Golden Mandheling, using a KONO dripper for brewing (this dripper was invented to imitate flannel brewing to produce thick coffee). For medium-dark roasted coffee, choose a medium-coarse grind (57% passes through standard #20 sieve). Use a 1:13 coffee-to-water ratio, with 20 grams of coffee powder. Reducing the coffee-to-water ratio can make the coffee taste more concentrated. Use water temperature of 87°C.

Brewing process: Slowly pour water over the coffee grounds, keeping the surface as even as possible during pouring, and avoid shaking the dripper (because shaking will reduce the spacing between coffee grounds, which is not conducive to blooming and degassing). For the first stage, pour 40g of water in small circles in the center for a 30-second bloom. The coffee grounds layer will slowly expand and form a "hamburger" shape.

For the second stage, pour 120g of water in circles from the center outward, keeping the pouring height as close to the coffee layer as possible, with slow movements to avoid over-stirring. For the final stage, pour 100g of water, and wait until all the coffee liquid in the dripper flows into the lower pot to finish extraction. Total extraction time is 2 minutes.

Golden Mandheling flavor description: Nuts, chocolate, spices, herbs, caramel. Golden Mandheling tastes cleaner than Lintong Mandheling. The original herbal, earthy, and woody flavors of Mandheling are almost gone, but the caramel sweetness is more intense, and the fruit acidity is relatively bright and elegant.

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