How do PWN and Gayo golden Mandheling differ in the cup?

Mandheling is a wet-hulled Sumatran coffee with a heavy body, low acidity, and notes of cedar, dark chocolate, and earth. The golden mandheling label points to a stricter sorting standard, where defects are picked out by hand and the beans show a more uniform color. PWN, a well-known exporter, and the Gayo highlands both produce this grade.

PWN lots tend to taste deeper and more savory, with a syrupy body that holds up in a French press. Gayo golden Mandheling is often a touch cleaner, with sweeter spice and a slightly lighter finish. Both work in a Moka pot or as a single-origin espresso. Turkish coffee vs arabic coffee comes down to grind and method, and either style can use these beans.

Mandheling coffee is the flagship of Indonesia's Sumatra region, known for its rich, full-bodied style with a subtle, restrained acidity. Front Street Coffee conducted a blind test in which baristas cupped the coffees without knowing the identity of the beans, and the PWN Golden Mandheling was identified the fastest. Also in the lineup was a Front Street Gayo Golden Mandheling; the two come from the same region and both use the wet-hulled process, so what exactly is the difference? This article starts with Front Street Coffee's blind test, reviews the growing background of the Gayo Mountain region, compares the PWN Golden Mandheling and Front Street Gayo Golden Mandheling in terms of variety, sorting standards, and flavor performance, and includes Front Street Coffee's roasting records and brewing parameters to help coffee lovers understand how Mandheling coffee should be enjoyed.

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A few days ago, Front Street Coffee conducted a blind test of Mandheling coffees, in which all participating Front Street baristas did not know which of the 7 coffees in front of them was which. After this blind test, the Front Street baristas most quickly identified the Golden Mandheling coffee from Front Street PWN, but among the 7 coffees there was also a Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee bean. So what is the difference between Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling and Front Street Golden Mandheling? Why could the baristas identify Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling right away?

First, let's look at the coffee-growing regions of the two Golden Mandhelings. To better distinguish the two Golden Mandhelings, below Front Street will differentiate them as Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling and Front Street Gayo Golden Mandheling. These two Golden Mandhelings come from the area around Gayo Mountain in the Aceh region of northern Sumatra. Most of the coffee farmers working locally in Gayo Mountain are local farmers. Gayo Mountain is located around Lake Tawar in the Takengon area of Indonesia, in the Aceh Special Region at the northernmost part of Sumatra Island.

The elevation of the growing area is between 1,100 and 1,600 meters. Most of the coffee is grown on small coffee estates under shade trees. Coffee beans from the Gayo Mountain region are usually estate-level and use the wet-hulled process. Because the two coffees obtained by Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) have both undergone multiple rounds of sorting, compared with Mandheling coffee beans from other Sumatran regions, the coffee from the Gayo Mountain region has a cleaner mouthfeel and more obvious sweetness.

So what is the difference between Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling and Front Street Gayo Golden Mandheling? Although they come from the same coffee region and both use the wet-hulled process, in the coffee bean sorting process, Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans can be said to be extremely strict.

Only PWN's Golden Mandheling is truly Front Street Golden Mandheling in the proper sense, and the packaging of Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans also bears the PWN logo. Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling undergoes three rounds of hand sorting and one round of machine sorting, four rounds of sorting in total. Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling uses the Ateng variety, which is a variety produced by crossing Timor and Arabica again, and its flavor is cleaner than that of the Timor variety. The specification of Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans is 18 screen or above, with fewer than 3 defective beans (in a 300g green bean sample), belonging to the highest grade, G1. The color is on the darker green side, and the shape is neat flat beans. After strict sorting, Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling not only no longer has the earthy, miscellaneous flavors unique to ordinary Mandheling, but also tastes cleaner and more transparent, with a stronger sweetness.

Although everyone knows that only PWN's Golden Mandheling is called Golden Mandheling, in reality PWN's annual output is not large, so a great many large-bean selected Golden Mandhelings are not from PWN. If you are not sure, you might ask the seller to provide the PWN green bean sack or the certificate accompanying the beans to know whether it is what Front Street calls Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling. Front Street Coffee's (FrontStreet Coffee) Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee is from PWN, and the certificate also arrived at Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) together with the Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans that reached port this November.

And why is Front Street Gayo Golden Mandheling also called Golden Mandheling? Because this coffee bean has also undergone multiple rounds of sorting. Front Street Gayo Golden Mandheling uses 3 rounds of hand sorting and uses the timtim coffee variety, which is what we commonly call the Timor variety. Timor is a hybrid of Arabica and Robusta. Although its flavor is more refined than Robusta's, it still retains a lot of Robusta's rich coffee flavor. Therefore, even though it has undergone 3 rounds of selection and also reaches G1 grade, Front Street Gayo Golden Mandheling still cannot reach the cleanliness and sweet clarity of Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling in flavor.

Wet-hulled process

The specific steps of the wet-hulled process can be divided into the following two stages: In the first stage, the skin and pulp are removed with a wooden pulper, and after 3 hours of fermentation, it is sun-dried until the moisture content drops to 30-50%, half-dry and half-wet. In the second stage, the mucilage and parchment layer are removed, and drying continues in the later stage. The drying process takes 2-4 days, and the moisture content drops to 12-13%. Nowadays, the development of Indonesian coffee is no longer the poor scene it once was. There are quite a few estates and companies with the means to use the washed method, but why have they not abandoned the wet-hulled method? Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) believes that the wet-hulled method is the factor that made Mandheling coffee known to the world. At the mention of Mandheling coffee, one thinks of the wet-hulled method, so they have long been in a mutually reinforcing relationship.

Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) roasting records

Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee roasting record: Yangjia 800N, charge weight 480g. Charge when the drum temperature reaches 200°C, set the damper to 3, adjust the heat to 160°C after 1 minute, keep the damper unchanged, roast until 5'40'', at 148°C, when the bean surface turns yellow, the grassy smell completely disappears, and dehydration is complete. Adjust the heat to 140°C, change the damper to 4; at the 9'40" mark, ugly wrinkles and dark streaks appear on the bean surface, and the toast smell clearly turns into coffee aroma, which can be defined as the prelude to first crack. At this time, listen carefully for the sound of the first crack. First crack begins at 9'54'', reduce the heat to 60°C, set the damper to 5, and drop at 204.5°C.

Front Street Gayo Golden Mandheling coffee roasting record: Yangjia 800N, charge weight 480g. Charge when the temperature reaches 200°C, set the damper to 3, adjust the heat to 160°C after 1 minute, keep the damper unchanged, roast until 5'18'', at 148°C, when the bean surface turns yellow, the grassy smell completely disappears, and dehydration is complete. Adjust the heat to 140°C, change the damper to 4; at the 8'00" mark, ugly wrinkles and dark streaks appear on the bean surface, and the toast smell clearly turns into coffee aroma, which can be defined as the prelude to first crack. At this time, listen carefully for the sound of the first crack. First crack begins at 9'00", reduce the heat to 80°C, set the damper to 5, and drop at 202°C. Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) brewing comparison

This brewing highlights the rich, clean, and aromatic characteristics of the two Golden Mandhelings. A KONO dripper is used for brewing (this dripper was invented to imitate the thick coffee produced by a cloth filter). For medium-dark roasted coffee, choose a medium-coarse grind for pour-over (70% passing a No. 20 standard sieve). Use a 1:13 coffee-to-water ratio, with 20 grams of coffee powder; lowering the coffee-to-water ratio makes the coffee taste richer. Use a water temperature of 87°C.

Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) brewing process: Slowly pour in the coffee powder, and try to keep it level during pouring, avoiding shaking the dripper (because shaking will reduce the spacing between coffee particles, which is unfavorable for degassing during blooming). In the first stage, pour 40g of water in a small circular motion in the center and let it bloom for 30 seconds; the coffee bed will gradually expand into a "hamburger." In the second stage, pour 120g in an outward circular motion from the center, keeping the pouring height as close to the coffee bed as possible, moving slowly, and avoiding excessive agitation. In the final stage, pour 100g, and wait until all the coffee liquid in the dripper has flowed into the server to end extraction. The extraction time is 2 minutes.

Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling flavor description: Sweet herbs, cinnamon-like spices, orange and pomelo peel notes, rich and full-bodied sweetness, creamy walnut chocolate. The fruit acidity is restrained and soft, the aroma carries a strong melon sweetness, and as the temperature drops the herbal aroma emerges, with light spices; the herbal note is rich and full-bodied with intense sweetness.

Front Street Gayo Golden Mandheling flavor description: Spicy herbal notes, soft acidity, a finish of cocoa and nuts, obvious sweetness, and high body.

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