Golden Mandheling has always occupied a unique position in the specialty coffee world. It has the signature mellow mouthfeel of Mandheling, yet through strict screening it presents a cleaner cup profile. This article begins with the historical misreading behind the name Mandheling, then gradually goes deeper into the three-stage drying method of the Lintong producing region in Sumatra, explaining the causes of Mandheling's low-acid, thick flavor, and sorting out how Golden Mandheling achieves a quality leap through density color sorting and four rounds of hand sorting. It will also touch on how, after PWN Company registered the trademark first, Japanese manufacturers were forced to rename it Gold Top Mandheling. If you are interested in the past and present of this Indonesian coffee, Front Street Coffee recommends that you read it patiently to the end.
In the specialty coffee landscape, Golden Mandheling's position does not seem dim compared with Blue Mountain. Recently I looked through a lot of material about its origins, and after reading the passage written by Rose, I became even more determined to thoroughly clarify the ins and outs of this bean - why it is called Golden Mandheling, and why the flavor in the cup carries a layer of mystery. Next, I will sort it out for you one by one.
The name Mandheling actually belongs neither to a producing region, nor to a place name, port name, or coffee variety name. It comes from a mispronunciation of the Indonesian Mandailing people. During World War II, when the Japanese army occupied Indonesia, a Japanese soldier drank a cup of fragrant coffee in a cafe and asked the owner what the coffee was called, but the owner mistakenly thought the other party was asking where he was from, so he answered "Mandailing." After the war ended, the soldier recalled the cup of coffee he had tasted in Indonesia and commissioned a coffee merchant to ship 15 tons to Japan, where it became very popular in the market. The name Mandheling spread from there, and that coffee merchant was the later famous Pwani Coffee Company (PWN). What everyone now knows as Mandheling comes from around Lake Toba in northern Sumatra, and the finished product carries a unique herbal and forest aroma.
To discuss the past and present of Golden Mandheling, we must first start with Mandheling. The climate conditions of the Lintong region on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the cultivation level of local coffee farmers together shaped the character of this bean. Local water resources are scarce, and initially natural drying was used, but quality fluctuated greatly, so later a semi-washed method close to Brazil's was adopted. However, Indonesia's climate is humid, and it is impossible to leave the sticky pods outdoors for two or three days like in Brazil, otherwise the pods would mold. Therefore they can only be dried for several hours to one day, and when the moisture content drops to 20% to 30%, the mucilage has not yet solidified when the beans are collected by bean traders and sent to crude processing plants to remove the mucilage by machine, avoiding excessive fermentation of the mucilage that would produce sour and foul odors. In other words, Lintong Mandheling has its mucilage layer scraped off before the pod is fully dry, and this is precisely the main reason it has low fruit acidity and outstanding body. After a little more drying, the coffee inside the pod has a moisture content of about 18%. Finally, exporters in Medan buy the undried pods and put them into large drying yards or machines to dry until the moisture content drops to 12%, at which point they can be stored. It can thus be seen that, because farmers lack sufficient equipment, the drying process of Lintong Mandheling has formed a three-stage division of labor among farmers, bean collectors, and exporters. Mandheling's unique herbal aroma and driftwood note come precisely from the three-stage drying of the mucilage layer in a high-humidity environment. This is also an extremely rare processing method in the world, and by accident it created Mandheling's low-acid, thick, and stuffy-aromatic flavor. Because the three-stage drying method has many variables and rough processing techniques, Mandheling can be called the most unstable specialty coffee in quality, with broken beans, moldy beans, black beans, and unripe beans mixed in, giving roasters quite a headache, and before roasting they must spend a lot of time removing defective beans. But this does not affect the world's preference for mellow Mandheling. In order to improve the problem of a relatively high proportion of defective beans in Mandheling, Japanese people began adopting stricter quality control standards more than a decade ago. After drying, the green beans are first screened by density and color sorting, and finally undergo four rounds of hand sorting to remove defects, producing Golden Mandheling with a dark green color and uniform bean appearance.
Golden Mandheling tastes cleaner than Lintong Mandheling. Mandheling's original herbal, earthy, and woody notes almost disappear, replaced by a stronger caramel sweetness, and the fruit acidity also appears bright and elegant. Ordinary Lintong Mandheling must be roasted to second crack before being discharged to reduce off-flavors, while Golden Mandheling can present very good transparency and sweetness whether discharged before or after second crack, giving broader room for roasting interpretation.
However, Indonesia's Pwani Company registered the Golden Mandheling trademark first, forcing the Japanese company to change the name to Gold Top Mandheling.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
