This was a chance discovery.
I was exploring the (small) range of Fair Trade beans offered by my wholesaler, and grabbed a sample of two Sumatran Mandhelings – one with very little information available, and this one.
It’s a semi-washed bean and is the first certified organic Sumatran that I’ve tasted.
Background:
Produced by the the Gayo Organic Coffee Farmers Association (PPKGO). The PPKGO is an organic Fair Trade coffee cooperative located in the Gayo Highlands of the Aceh province of Sumatra, Indonesia. The Gayo Mountains are located not far from Lake Tawar which produces the highest grade Sumatran coffees.
Coop members are small-scale coffee farmers dedicated to producing 100% shade-grown, organic coffee. In a region known for political conflict, the co-op has continued to produce, process, and export high quality Sumatran coffee. It has maintained relative peace and unity among an ethnically diverse membership comprised of Gayo, Javanese, Acehnese, Padang, and Batak peoples. Twenty percent of PPKGO’s members are women.
Cooperative farmers live in an environmentally sensitive region—the buffer zone to Gunung Leuser National Park, which contains critical watershed areas and sanctuaries for endangered species such as the Sumatran tiger.
Fair Trade price incentives and technical support provided by the cooperative have encouraged sustainable agriculture and resource conservation.
About the coffee:
Varieties: Bergendal, Catimor, Caturra, Sidikalang, and Typica
Elevation: 1100-1500m
Processing: pulped, fermented, semi-washed (Sumatran fashion), sun dried, machine and hand-sorted.
Cup Characteristics: low acidity, medium to firm body, earthy
In the cup: (disclaimer: I don’t pretend to be an expert cupper, and these reviews are simply my descriptions of the beans as tasted)
This is a classic of it’s kind – deep, rich and earthy in character. It’s lush, hefty, loamy and distinctly tropical. This cup is round and smooth in body and offers a hint of chocolate, dark fruit and citrus. But it is also very clean in the mouth, even as an SO in a plunger, where Sumatrans can get too heavy and ‘muddy’.
Roasting Notes:
This is an easy bean to roast, although it does have a quiet first crack which maybe hard to hear for you popper roasters. It seems quite forgiving and copes OK with being taken into a rolling second crack (by accident!). My personal preference was to stop it at the beginning of second.
In my personal stash, this has displaced the ‘Kuda Mas’ Estate Mandheling for at least the time being.
(click image for a bigger version):
Indonesian Fair Trade Organic Sumatran Mandheling
Tasted: By Neil, on August 20th, September 2nd 2006
Bean to be offered: September 6th 2006
