How does Mandheling fit into coffee bean structure?

Mandheling is neither a region, a port, nor a variety name; it is a label that grew out of a World War II misunderstanding and now usually refers to Sumatra coffee. These beans are wet-hulled, low in acidity, and rely on dark roasting to bring out caramel, herbal, and cocoa notes. Light roasting, common in specialty coffee, does not suit them.

Front Street sells two versions: Lintong Mandheling, a G1 everyday drinking bean, and PWN Golden Mandheling, which is strictly sorted and higher in quality. The article also gives pour-over parameters and tasting points for dark-roasted Mandheling, so drinkers can adjust grind, water temperature, and pouring to match the bean.

From instant coffee to espresso to specialty coffee, the three waves of coffee have made light roasts mainstream, but not all beans are suited to light roasting. In this article, Front Street Coffee uses Mandheling, the representative of dark roasting, as an example to discuss the unique charm of dark-roasted coffee. Mandheling is not the name of a region or a variety, but a story that evolved from a misunderstanding during World War II, and usually refers to Sumatra coffee. It is processed using the wet-hulled method, has low acidity, and relies on dark roasting to reveal caramel, herbal, and cocoa flavors. Front Street currently sells two types: Lintong Mandheling and PWN Golden Mandheling. The former is a G1 everyday drinking bean, while the latter is strictly sorted and outstanding in quality. The article will also share the pour-over parameters and tasting points for dark-roasted Mandheling.

As coffee culture developed, it went through three waves—instant coffee, espresso, and specialty coffee—and light-roasted beans gradually took over the mainstream market. They are popular because light roasting takes less time, preserves more aromatic and acidic compounds, and produces a generally clean style with rich flavor layers.

In these years when light-roasted beans have dominated, they have fully embodied the concept of “terroir localization” in specialty coffee, and with the continuous advancement of processing methods, coffee’s layering and richness have been pushed to new heights. However, not all beans are suitable for light roasting, and many coffee beans are still better suited to dark roasting.

Does dark roasting really leave only bitterness? Actually, not necessarily. In this article, Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) uses Mandheling, the most representative dark roast, to talk with everyone about the charm of dark-roasted coffee.

What is Mandheling coffee ?

Mandheling is neither a producing region name, nor a port name, nor a variety name, but a story that evolved from a misunderstanding. During World War II in 1942, Japan occupied Indonesia. The Japanese army attacked Sumatra, and one month later the Dutch surrendered, after which the Japanese army took over Indonesia. Indonesia had been colonized by Britain and the Netherlands successively, so the locals did not react strongly to the arrival of the Japanese army. Until one day, a Japanese soldier drank a very aromatic and mellow cup of coffee in a coffee shop in Sumatra and asked the owner what coffee it was. The owner mistakenly thought the Japanese soldier was asking where he was from, so he answered, “the Mandheling people.”

Later, after this Japanese soldier returned home, he could not forget that cup of coffee and asked someone to find the shop owner in Sumatra and have him export a batch of the same beans to Japan. Sure enough, these beans were deeply loved by Japanese consumers. To make them easy for consumers to remember, they were named Mandheling. Thus Mandheling coffee was born. So what we usually call Mandheling coffee is actually “Sumatra coffee.”

Characteristics of Mandheling coffee beans

The most representative aspect of Mandheling is its processing method—wet hulling. Common washed, natural, and honey processes keep the parchment until the bean body dehydrates and hardens, the moisture content drops to 12%, or it is stored in warehouses for 1–3 months before being hulled. But the wet-hulled method removes the parchment while the bean body is still moist and soft, with moisture content as high as 30–35%, leaving the green bean surface directly exposed, and then drying continues.

Because the drying time is shortened, the coffee beans’ fermentation period also becomes shorter. In addition, although the variety used for Mandheling is Arabica, it inherently carries a small amount of Robusta genes, so its acidity is already not high, and rapid drying further lowers the acidity.

Because the acidity is not high, it is not suitable to force the preservation of grassy acidity through light roasting, so dark roasting is needed to increase body and bring Mandheling caramel, herbal, and cocoa flavors, which also demonstrates Mandheling’s distinctive “terroir flavor.”

Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) currently sells two types of Mandheling coffee beans , namely “Lintong Mandheling coffee beans ” and “ Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans .” Among them, Golden Mandheling, because of its extremely high quality, has become one of the signature dark-roasted coffees on Front Street’s bean list.

What grade does Golden Mandheling belong to?

“Golden Mandheling” is the exclusive brand of the Indonesian company Pwani Coffee Company (PWN). There are many Mandheling products on the market, and because PWN registered the English name “Golden Mandheling” as a trademark, only Golden Mandheling produced by PWN is true Golden Mandheling in the strict sense. Everyone can identify authentic Golden Mandheling through the green bean burlap sacks bearing the PWN mark and the certificate of origin signed by PWN. Front Street displays these two identifiers in its Dongshankou store.

After the Japanese took a liking to Sumatra coffee back then and purchased it for a long time, they gradually discovered that the quality of local beans was often uneven. So they became more meticulous in Mandheling production and began setting strict standards and methods for defect sorting, starting with values such as bean density, specification, shape, and color. The Mandheling produced needed machine plus manual removal of defects to ensure the beans were complete, uniform, large, and translucent, and to reduce earthy and grassy flavors. It is said that under the sun they appeared golden and resplendent, so the name “Golden Mandheling” was adopted.

Indonesian green coffee grading is mainly based on the number of defective beans, supplemented by size specification. General quality requirements are no live insects, no mold or rot, maximum moisture content 12.5%, and impurity rate less than 0.5%. According to defect rate, it is divided into six grades. The highest grade, G1, requires fewer than 11 total defective beans in a 300g sample. Lintong Mandheling coffee in Front Street’s everyday drinking bean series is G1, using the wet-hulled method, namely the conventional version of Indonesian Mandheling flavor.

PWN, which has achieved the utmost in sorting, purchases Mandheling green beans of 18 screen size or above, at G1 grade with fewer than 3 defective beans in a 300g sample, which is the highest grade of Indonesian green beans. Subsequently, it strictly follows standards with 1 machine sorting plus 3 manual defect-picking rounds to ensure Mandheling coffee beans are uniform in shape and size. In addition, before packaging, PWN also places the green beans in a machine for density and color sorting, making Golden Mandheling uniform and translucent in color.

In order to make the two types of Mandheling coffee rich and mellow without unpleasant bitterness, Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) roasts them to a medium-dark level shortly before second crack.

The charm of dark-roasted Mandheling coffee

Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) believes that although specialty coffee is defined as expressing terroir flavor, terroir flavor does not necessarily mean it must show the sweetness and acidity of the coffee fruit one hundred percent. On the contrary, the herbal, caramel, creamy, and cocoa notes brought by dark roasting better present the characteristics of Mandheling coffee.

In other words, light roasting is like an exquisite Japanese meal: refined, but if eaten every day, you quickly tire of it. Dark-roasted coffee is like home cooking: plain, but part of three meals a day. Dark-roasted coffee gives a grounded, steady feeling and never becomes tiresome no matter how often you drink it.

How to brew dark-roasted Mandheling coffee?

The longer the roasting time, the looser the coffee bean structure, and the faster coffee substances are released. Therefore, Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) suggests grinding coarser when brewing Mandheling and not using water that is too hot, in order to reduce extraction in the later stage and lessen bitterness.

For Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) store output, the following drip extraction parameters are used: dripper: KONO, dose: 15 grams, water-to-coffee ratio: 1:15, grind size: 70% passing through a Chinese standard No. 20 sieve, water temperature: 88°C.

Specific brewing method: first pour 30g of water for a 30s bloom; in the second stage, pour in a small stream in circles up to 125g, wait until the water level in the coffee bed drops halfway before pouring again, then continue pouring in a small stream in circles up to 225g. After all dripping is complete, the total extraction time is about 2 minutes 10 seconds.

Brewed flavor of Front Street Lintong region Mandheling coffee: a rich herbal aroma on the palate, black chocolate, caramel, and a sweet aftertaste.

Brewed flavor of Front Street - Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee: the coffee is varied in layers overall, mellow and clean. Rich nut and caramel aromas, with chocolate notes, a lasting finish, and high balance.

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