Sumatra Mandheling coffee from the Indonesian island of Sumatra has long been famous for its rich, full-bodied character, and the Golden Mandheling G1 produced by PWN is the finest representative among specialty grades. This article focuses on the current-season Golden Mandheling that arrived at Front Street Coffee in December 2020, explaining one by one Indonesia's coffee grading system and the key information on PWN packaging bags, and providing a pour-over plan for this medium-dark roasted bean—including dripper selection, grind size, coffee-to-water ratio, water temperature, and staged pouring rhythm. Finally, it sorts out its flavor expression woven from nuts, chocolate, spices, and caramel, helping coffee lovers brew a clean yet intense cup at home.
In the coffee landscape of Asia, the most renowned producing region is the Malay Archipelago, which includes Sumatra, Java, and Kalimantan. Among them, Sumatra in Indonesia is especially famous for the Front Street Mandheling coffee it produces, often described as "the fullest-bodied coffee in the world."
Indonesia has established a rather complicated coffee grading system, mainly based on the number of defective beans, with bean size as an auxiliary reference. According to defect rates, it is divided into six grades, G1 through G6.
Coffee bean size designation Some higher-quality Indonesian coffees also indicate screen size, for example Golden Mandheling is usually labeled as 17 mesh or 18 mesh.
Number of screenings In addition to the above grading, some specialty-grade Indonesian coffees are also manually sorted, marked as Double Picked or Triple Picked. This is because Indonesia generally uses the wet-hulling process, which more easily produces defective beans; the more hand-sorting steps, the more guaranteed the final quality.
Front Street Coffee received a batch of Golden Mandheling from the new crop season of October 2020 in December 2020. The packaging bag is printed with basic information about this batch of coffee beans, identified one by one below.
PWN: represents the logo of Pawani Company
GOLDEN MANDHELING: Golden Mandheling
TRIPLE PICKED: triple hand-sorted, indicating a higher quality grade
COFFEE ARABICA: Arabica coffee, referring to the coffee bean variety. PWN used to select coffee beans in the Lintong region (of the Typica variety), but in recent years Lintong coffee farmers have grafted tree varieties in pursuit of yield and profit, and quality has declined noticeably. Therefore, PWN moved its production area to the Gayo Mountains in Aceh and switched the variety to Ateng.
GRADE 1: corresponds to G1, the highest grade in Indonesia's green bean grading system, with fewer than 11 total defects in green beans.
PROD.OF INDONESIA: that is, product of Indonesia, produced in Indonesia
30 KGS NET: 20 kilograms total including the burlap sack
EXP: 10.2024: shelf life until October 2024, which also exactly indicates that this batch belongs to the October 2020 crop season.
Front Street roasting analysis Golden Mandheling has an excellent herbal aroma, with caramel sweetness even more prominent, fruit acidity steady and elegant, a thick sweetness, and a rich yet wild spice flavor. Lintong Mandheling usually needs to be roasted until after second crack to effectively suppress off-flavors, but Golden Mandheling already has good cleanliness and sweetness when dropped before second crack, giving roasting more room for flexibility.
This brewing aims to showcase Golden Mandheling's rich, clean, and aromatic qualities, using a KONO dripper (this dripper was originally designed to imitate the thick mouthfeel produced by flannel brewing). For medium-dark roasted beans, use a medium-coarse grind (75% passing a No. 20 standard sieve). The coffee-to-water ratio is set at 1:15, with 20 grams of coffee; lowering the coffee-to-water ratio pushes the mouthfeel in a richer direction. Water temperature is controlled at 87°C.
Brewing process: slowly pour in the coffee grounds, keeping them as level as possible during pouring, and do not shake the dripper (shaking narrows the gaps between particles and is not conducive to degassing during blooming). In the first stage, pour 40g of water in a small circle from the center, bloom for 30 seconds, and the coffee bed will gradually expand and rise into a "hamburger" shape.
In the second stage, pour in a circular motion from the center outward to 120g, keeping the pouring height as close to the coffee bed as possible and slowing the motion to avoid over-agitation. In the final stage, pour another 100g, and end extraction when all the coffee liquid in the dripper has flowed into the server. Total extraction time is about 2 minutes.
Golden Mandheling flavor description: nuts, chocolate, spices, herbs, caramel. Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling tastes cleaner than Lintong Mandheling; the herbal, earthy, and woody notes customary in Mandheling are almost imperceptible, replaced by stronger caramel sweetness, and the fruit acidity is brighter and more elegant.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
