How does Mandheling coffee get its name?

Single-origin coffee beans are usually named after their producing region, a competition title, an estate brand or a processing method. Mandheling splits into four subtypes: Lintong Mandheling, Golden Mandheling, Tiger Mandheling and Aged Mandheling, each reflecting a different area, grade or handling approach.

Region names often go a level deeper, as with Yirgacheffe washing stations such as Idido or Kochere, or Central American estates like Huila, Antigua and Kona. Suffixes such as G1, AA and SHB carry grading information, so reading the label tells you the origin, grade and process before you buy.

Step into Front Street Coffee, and many coffee lovers will feel utterly confused when faced with the dazzling array of bean listings. What exactly gives these coffee beans the right to be named as they are? This article will systematically sort out the naming rules for single-origin coffee beans from the dimensions of producing region naming, competition titles, estate brands, and processing methods, with a key breakdown of the four major subtypes of Mandheling coffee—Lintong Mandheling, Golden Mandheling, Tiger Mandheling, and Aged Mandheling—to help you quickly distinguish the differences when purchasing. At the same time, the article will also explain the grading meanings represented by common suffixes such as G1, AA, and SHB, so that the information behind coffee bean labels becomes clear at a glance.

Introduction

At Front Street Coffee, many customers stare at the densely packed bean list and cannot come back to their senses for a long time. Today, Front Street Coffee will introduce why these beans are called by these names.

Named in the form of producing region/origin/producer

Most single-origin coffee beans today are named in this way, as it more intuitively shows the source of the coffee beans. Yirgacheffe, which we are very familiar with, is a famous coffee-producing region in Ethiopia. The Yirgacheffe we commonly see is often followed by a string of names, such as Idido, Kochere, Beloya, Worka, and so on, which are the names of more specific producer cooperatives and washing stations within the Yirgacheffe region.

In Central and South America, independent estates or major coffee-producing regions are used as names, such as Colombia—the well-known Huila, Cauca, and Narino—Guatemala's Antigua and Huehuetenango, Jamaica Blue Mountain, and Hawaii Kona, all of which are names of coffee-producing regions.

Named after titles won in green bean competitions

Every year, famous green coffee competitions such as TOH, COE, and BOP receive extreme attention from coffee traders. These award-winning coffees are named after the titles they won, such as the 2020 Ethiopia COE 22nd place that Front Street Coffee previously participated in bidding for. There is also the well-known 2017 TOH champion "Huakui."

Named by coffee estates for their own products

For some rare coffee varieties or coffee varieties widely recognized as having excellent flavor, they are named in the form of estate name + bean variety, such as Geisha, Pink Bourbon, and Pacamara.

For coffees with unique flavors created by unique processing methods, estates or processors will name them with elegant or fitting names, such as Hacienda Canet's Musician Series, Finca El Arbol's Rose Valley, and Honduras Finca Moca's Sherry.

There is also classification according to the brand positioning of one's own products, such as Hacienda La Esmeralda dividing its coffee into Esmeralda Special (Geisha Red Label), Private Collection (Geisha Green Label), Geisha 1500 (Geisha Blue Label), Diamond Mountain (Specialty Catuai), and Palmyra (Regular Catuai). The series products of Hacienda La Esmeralda Village are also named in this way (similar to Hacienda La Esmeralda), as are Panama Butterfly, Golden Mandheling (discussed in detail below), and Guatemala Flora.

The Name Mandheling

This one is rather special. It is neither a producing region name nor a coffee variety, but the name of the local coffee-growing tribe (and it was even misheard; the tribal name is transliterated as "Mandailing"). Today, Arabica coffee beans produced in North Sumatra can all be called Mandheling coffee.

Mandheling coffee is further divided into many types. Basically, the naming methods include naming by origin, such as Lintong Mandheling, Gayo Mandheling, and Lake Toba Mandheling. There is naming by brand, such as Golden Mandheling and Tiger Mandheling. Golden Mandheling is the brand trademark of the Pawani company, and its biggest feature is its extremely strict bean screening standards. It uses coffee beans of 18 screen size and above, adopts three rounds of manual hand sorting and one round of machine sorting, has few defects, and large beans. It would not be an exaggeration to call it the highest-quality Mandheling.

Tiger Mandheling (official name: Mandheling Sumatra Tiger) uses coffee beans from the Lake Toba area of Aceh, has an aroma with Chinese herbal medicine notes, and only Mandheling with a defect rate below 4% at 17 screen size and above can be called "Tiger."

There is also Aged Mandheling, named for its special processing method. Aged Mandheling is made by placing coffee beans that have completed wet-hulling into a constant-temperature warehouse for 2-3 years of aging. After long maturation, Mandheling's fruit acidity not only becomes soft and gentle, but its body and unique flavor can also perform astonishingly in the mouth.

G1, AA, NO.1, SHB?

Many coffee bean names end with G1, G2, AA, AB, and the like. These numbers and letters all represent the grade of the coffee. Different coffee-producing countries have different grading standards. G1 and G2 are generally coffee beans graded by defect rate, with G1 being the highest grade, such as Yirgacheffe G1. AA and AB are graded by coffee bean size, such as Kenya AA, which represents Kenya's best coffee quality. SHB means Strictly Hard Bean, generally a grading standard in Central and South American countries.

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