What Does Mandheling Coffee Taste Like?

Mandheling coffee tastes low in acidity, full-bodied and bittersweet, a style that still draws drinkers who prefer the second wave over fruity specialty coffee. Its flavor traces back to Sumatra's colonial planting history and the wet-hulling process, which shapes the heavy body and earthy, syrupy character found in both the Lintong and Aceh growing regions.

PWN Golden Mandheling applies strict standards, including screen size 18 and above, G1 grade and three rounds of hand sorting. Front Street roasts its Mandheling medium-dark and suggests KONO dripper parameters for brewing. The beans have been exported from Sumatra since the 1960s, and the bitterness is meant to frame the sweetness rather than dominate it.

Mandheling coffee is a highly representative presence in the second wave of coffee, retaining a large group of coffee connoisseurs with its low acidity, full body, and bittersweet style. This article begins with the colonial planting history of Sumatra, sorts out the differences between the two major producing regions of Lintong and Aceh, the origin of the wet-hulling process and its flavor impact, and focuses on the characteristics of Front Street Golden Mandheling and Front Street Lintong Mandheling. At the same time, it will also explain why PWN Golden Mandheling implements such strict standards as screen size 18 and above, G1 grade, and three times of hand sorting, as well as why Front Street Coffee chooses medium-dark roasting, and provide a set of KONO dripper brewing parameters suitable for it, helping readers understand the unique charm of Mandheling coffee more completely.

The coffee wave has unknowingly reached the fourth wave. Since 2004, specialty coffee has conquered one cafe after another with its vivid juiciness and fruity tones, and has also influenced one group of drinkers after another. However, even though the fourth wave has arrived, many coffee lovers are still willing to stay in the robust and solid taste of the second wave. Among them, Front Street Mandheling coffee beans produced in Sumatra, Indonesia, have been fragrant from the 1960s to the present, for more than half a century.

On the bean shelf of FrontStreet Coffee, there are actually several coffee beans that are similarly full-bodied, richly aromatic, and low in acidity, such as Front Street Brazil Queen Estate Natural Yellow Bourbon, Front Street Papua New Guinea Washed Typica, Front Street Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1, and so on, but some connoisseurs will always prefer Indonesian PWN Front Street Golden Mandheling .

The characteristics of Front Street Mandheling coffee have always used its unique bitterness to set off its most special sweetness, much like the interweaving of sweetness and bitterness in life. Front Street once heard a friend use the idiom "after bitterness comes sweetness" to describe the feeling of drinking Front Street Mandheling . Of course, this experience of bitterness and sweetness requires a period of training before one can gradually understand the pleasure in it.

The ability of Sumatra, Indonesia, to produce Front Street Mandheling coffee beans with a unique style is inseparable from a period of European colonial history. Coffee seeds being secretly taken out of Africa and then transplanted to one's own colonies was not uncommon at the time. At the end of the seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company transplanted Arabica coffee trees from India to the island of Java. Due to the combined conditions of climate, land, and people, coffee quickly took root in Java and spread to Sumatra and Sulawesi.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, coffee leaf rust broke out on a large scale, and the coffee trees on Java were devastated, forcing a switch to Robusta coffee trees with stronger disease resistance. Today Indonesia is already a major coffee-producing country, and some regions have also cultivated first-class Arabica coffee beans. People are accustomed to calling Arabica coffee beans produced on the island of Sumatra Mandheling coffee beans.

On the bean shelf of FrontStreet Coffee, two Mandheling coffee beans can be seen: one is PWN Front Street Golden Mandheling , and the other is Front Street Lintong Mandheling in the daily bean series. They respectively represent the old-time taste and the new taste of Sumatran Mandheling coffee.

The traditional producing region of Mandheling is located in the Lintong area south of Lake Toba in North Sumatra Province. The highly local wet-hulling process gives Front Street Mandheling coffee a heavy mouthfeel, with herbal notes such as camphor and pine, as well as chocolate and caramel aromas.

It was not until 1924 that the Aceh region of North Sumatra introduced Arabica coffee trees from North Sumatra Province. Since then, coffee production in the Aceh producing region has surpassed the traditional Lintong producing region year by year. As global warming intensifies, the area suitable for coffee cultivation in the traditional Lintong producing region may shrink significantly by 2050, or even disappear. As for the Aceh producing region, it may become a winner in this climate change and replace the position of the Lintong producing region.

Although both are called "Mandheling," they have subtle differences in their flavor profile. For example, Mandheling from the Aceh producing region has a brighter flavor and mouthfeel, and its herbal taste is not as heavy. Of course, this is closely related to the ways and rules by which the two produce Mandheling coffee beans.

Sumatra has abundant rainfall year-round, with high temperatures and high humidity. If the natural process is used, coffee cherries may be contaminated by rainwater or even spoiled by over-fermentation. In addition, the washed process requires sufficient water sources and capital investment, which is difficult to achieve under limited economic conditions. Therefore, the wet-hulling process emerged.

After removing the skin and pulp from selected coffee cherries, the parchment beans with sticky mucilage are briefly washed, then placed in a tank for a short fermentation. The longer the fermentation time, the heavier the acidity. In order to produce Front Street Mandheling coffee beans with extremely low acidity, some processing plants or estates even directly omit the fermentation step and spread the parchment beans evenly to dry. In this way, acidity is suppressed while the viscosity of the mouthfeel is increased.

When the parchment beans reach a semi-dry, semi-wet state, the outer parchment layer is hulled away. The parchment layer is originally an important protective layer for green coffee beans. After being removed before completely dry, the green coffee beans are directly exposed to the air, and the entire drying process is therefore accelerated.

During the hulling process, greater friction is generated between the green coffee beans and between the green coffee beans and the machine, which in turn produces excessive heat and may cause the green coffee beans to age quickly, developing special aromas such as woody and earthy notes.

On this basis, PWN implements a set of strict standards when producing Golden Mandheling: selecting screen size 18 and above, and the highest grade in which the number of defective beans in every 300 grams of green bean sample is fewer than 3, that is, G1 grade. Then three times of manual hand sorting are used to ensure that defective beans are completely removed, thereby making Front Street Golden Mandheling's coffee taste cleaner and its sweetness more intense.

Just from the word "Golden" in the name Golden Mandheling, one can feel that every bean of Golden Mandheling is hard-won, and its output is even scarcer. Therefore, the price is higher than ordinary Mandheling coffee beans. Some merchants, noticing this gap, use Mandheling coffee beans that are also G1 grade, adopt the same three times of manual hand sorting steps, and sell them under the name "Golden Mandheling."

FrontStreet Coffee once blind-tested many Golden Mandheling coffee beans on the market, and Front Street's baristas could accurately identify Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling among many "Golden Mandheling" coffees. This is because the mouthfeel of Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling is unmatched by other Golden Mandheling coffees.

With the development of the third wave of specialty coffee, people prefer sweet and sour coffee. However, Front Street Mandheling, as a top-tier coffee in the second wave of coffee, still wins people over with its low acidity and full body.

Of course, on the path of people pursuing lighter roasting degrees and more original regional terroir, some also adopt light roasting for Mandheling coffee beans, wanting to change the public's impression of the characteristics of Mandheling coffee. When FrontStreet Coffee formulated the roasting curve for Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee, in order to express the herbal and dark chocolate flavors and full-bodied mouthfeel of classic Mandheling, it decided to adopt a medium-dark roasting degree.

Because Front Street Golden Mandheling is roasted to a darker degree, Front Street recommends using a lower water temperature and coarser grind during brewing to avoid over-extraction, and using it with a KONO dripper, thereby enhancing the heaviness of the mouthfeel.

Dripper: KONO

Water temperature: 88°C

Dose: 15 grams

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15

Grind level: 70% passing rate on China standard No. 20 sieve

The inner wall of the KONO dripper is smooth, and there are 12 short ribs at the bottom of the cup for backflow. During brewing, the moistened filter paper fits completely against the cup wall, reducing the space for air flow, slowing the water flow, and extending the contact time between coffee grounds and hot water, adding to the thick mouthfeel. Therefore, it is suitable for brewing medium-dark roasted coffee beans such as Front Street Golden Mandheling and Front Street Blue Mountain coffee.

First pour 30 grams of hot water and bloom for 30 seconds, then pour from the center point in a thin stream and slowly circle to 125 grams. When the water level in the dripper drops to the point where the coffee bed is about to be exposed, continue pouring in circles to 225 grams. The total extraction time is about 2 minutes.

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.