Who is Indonesian Golden Mandheling Pour-Over Coffee Suitable For - Flavor Characteristics and Taste of Mandheling Coffee Beans

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The Rise of Floral and Fruity Coffee

Since the Geisha coffee, with its rich floral and fruity aroma, became famous in the Best of Panama competition in 2004, most specialty coffees have been benchmarking against traditional coffee with distinctive floral and fruity notes, sparking a new wave of coffee trends.

Since coffees with floral and fruity aromas typically have a crisp and full-bodied mouthfeel, compared to distinctly bitter and robust coffees, they have gained considerable popularity. Blue Mountain coffee and Mandheling coffee are mentioned less frequently, and some may consider drinking robust-style coffee as old-fashioned.

Why Robust Coffees Still Matter

Don't think that way! Whether it's Blue Mountain coffee or Mandheling coffee, they are suitable for everyone! Compared to light roast coffee beans with floral and fruity aromas that give people a lively and novel feeling, Mandheling coffee is quite the opposite. Low-acidity and full-bodied coffee provides a sense of stability and groundedness, which is why Mandheling coffee has consistently appeared on coffee shop menus for so many years, becoming a classic.

What is Mandheling Coffee?

Mandheling coffee specifically refers to Arabica coffee beans grown on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, with varieties mainly being Timtim or Ateng. Timtim is Timor, an Arabica variety with Robusta heritage, while Ateng is Catimor, a hybrid of Caturra and Timor.

Both varieties have genes from both Arabica and Robusta. The Arabica genes bring better coffee flavor to the coffee, while the Robusta genes provide better pest and disease resistance, making them suitable for growing in Indonesia's hot and humid climate.

Through cupping comparisons by FrontStreet Coffee, regardless of the type of Mandheling coffee bean, they all exhibit rich flavors of herbs, spices, and cocoa. These unique regional characteristics may be due to Robusta genes or the unique local coffee processing methods.

Mandheling Coffee Processing Method

Indonesia is perennially humid and rainy, combined with the island's humid climate, requiring short-term drying methods. Therefore, local coffee farmers first perform washed fermentation immediately after harvesting coffee cherries. After fermentation, the coffee cherries are immediately poured into a depulper to remove the fruit flesh and husk.

At this point, the moisture content is about 30-40%. Sun drying or artificial drying is then used to reduce the moisture content of the coffee cherries to about 13%. This method can save at least 30% of processing time, allowing coffee beans to be quickly converted to cash and reducing costs.

This processing method can be considered a combination of semi-washed and semi-sun-dried. This coffee processing method was named Wet Hulling and is a coffee bean processing method used only in the Indonesian region.

Why is Mandheling Coffee Called "Mandheling"?

Traditional coffee bean naming mostly uses region + estate + processing method, because under the wave of specialty coffee, consumers increasingly value the production history of coffee beans. However, Mandheling is quite different. It is not a region, place name, estate name, or variety name, but rather a phonetic error of the Indonesian Mandheling ethnic group.

According to legend, during World War II, a Japanese person tasted a coffee with a very rich and solid flavor in a coffee shop on Sumatra Island, Indonesia, and wanted to ask what kind of coffee bean it was. Due to the language barrier, the local person thought the Japanese was asking about their ethnic group (Indonesia has many indigenous ethnic groups), so they answered "Mandheling."

Later, after World War II ended, this Japanese person remembered the cup of coffee they had tasted and managed to ship 15 tons of coffee beans grown on Sumatra Island back to Japan. As expected, it was very popular among the Japanese public. To give everyone a deeper impression of these coffee beans, this Japanese person used the name of the Mandheling ethnic group to name these coffee beans from the Sumatra region.

What is Golden Mandheling Coffee?

The local person who answered "Mandheling" mentioned above later discovered that Japanese people really liked Mandheling coffee beans and had higher requirements for Mandheling coffee beans. Therefore, they established a company called Pwani Coffee Company (PWN for short), which specializes in selling selected, high-quality, and stable Mandheling coffee beans.

Due to the Mandheling coffee bean variety itself plus Indonesia's unique Wet Hulling method (Wet Hulling is sun-drying with parchment for 2-3 days during the normal washed processing until the moisture content reaches 20-24%, then hulling the parchment), the ultra-fast processing and drying also results in a higher defect rate for Mandheling.

To improve the quality of Mandheling coffee beans, PWN uses manual selection from fruit to processed coffee beans. Although this approach increases the cost of coffee, such high-quality coffee beans are very popular among consumers.

To distinguish from ordinary Mandheling coffee beans, PWN's owner saw that the raw beans emitted a golden color under sunlight and named them Golden Mandheling coffee beans, registering a trademark. Therefore, theoretically, only those from PWN Company are authentic Golden Mandheling coffee. Other companies, even with the same selection standards, can only be called specialty Mandheling coffee.

Some friends worry that their purchased Golden Mandheling coffee beans are not authentic PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans. In fact, they can ask merchants to show relevant proof. FrontStreet Coffee's stores also have relevant proof hanging on the walls: one is a certificate provided by PWN Company; the other is a sack proof of Golden Mandheling raw beans, printed with the PWN logo.

How to Brew PWN Golden Mandheling Coffee Beans Well?

To highlight the high body characteristics of Golden Mandheling, FrontStreet Coffee uses a Kono dripper for production. The reason for choosing Kono is its unique conical design ensures even water distribution and drips at a stable rate throughout the filter. The grooves on the lower half of the cone fit tightly with the filter, thereby reducing sediment and improving airflow, ultimately resulting in a cup of coffee with concentrated flavor and fuller body.

Dripper: KONO

Dose: 15g

Water ratio: 1:15

Grind size: 70% pass through China standard #20 sieve

Water temperature: 88°C

Bloom with 30g water for 30s, then slowly inject water with a small flow to 125g for segmentation, then slightly increase the flow to slowly brew to 225g. Total extraction time: 2 minutes.

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style).

For more specialty coffee beans, please add the private WeChat of FrontStreet Coffee, WeChat ID: qjcoffeex.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473