What Makes Golden Mandheling Coffee Beans Authentic?

Authentic Golden Mandheling coffee beans trace back to a Japanese trading effort in North Sumatra, where cooperation with local partners built the name's reputation for top-grade Mandheling. The local company Pawani registered the Golden Mandheling trademark first, so the PWN mark is the practical reference point when judging whether beans are genuine.

The article covers PWN green bean screening standards, the Ateng variety's background, and Front Street's roasting curve. Brewing guidance lists dripper choice, coffee dose, coffee-to-water ratio, grind size, water temperature, and a three-stage pour, followed by a flavor description that highlights the mellow sweetness typical of this Mandheling.

Golden Mandheling is highly praised by coffee enthusiasts, but there are many counterfeits on the market, and it is not easy to drink the authentic Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling. This article will start with the origin of Golden Mandheling and the background of the PWN trademark, explain how to identify authentic Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee beans, the screening standards of the PWN green bean company, and the origins of the Ateng variety, and share in detail Front Street's roasting curve and pour-over parameters. The brewing section covers the dripper choice, coffee dose, coffee-to-water ratio, grind size, water temperature, and three-stage pouring method, and finally gives a flavor and mouthfeel description of Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling to help you gain a more complete understanding of this Mandheling with a prominent mellow sweetness.

For many coffee lovers, Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee beans are both familiar and unfamiliar. Familiar, because praise for it is often heard among enthusiasts; unfamiliar, because the market is flooded with a large number of counterfeit Golden Mandheling coffee beans, and it is not easy to drink the authentic Golden Mandheling. What exactly are Golden Mandheling coffee beans? Where do authentic Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee beans come from? As a consumer, how can you distinguish real Golden Mandheling from fake? Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) will guide you through these questions one by one.

What are Golden Mandheling coffee beans?

If you think that as long as the coffee beans are large, uniform, and have few defects, they can be called Golden Mandheling coffee, then you are completely mistaken. Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee beans have a backstory: initially, a group of Japanese merchants planned to purchase top-quality Mandheling coffee beans and bring them back to Japan to open up the domestic market. Facing an unfamiliar Indonesian producing region, they chose to cooperate with the locals. It was under this cooperative model that the reputation of Golden Mandheling was established and it came to be regarded as the representative of high-quality Mandheling.

Later, due to internal reasons, Pawani, the "local" company responsible for working in the North Sumatra producing region, was the first to register the trademark "Golden Mandheling." The Japanese had to start over and launch "Ding Shang Mandheling."

Therefore, the authentic Front Street Golden Mandheling comes from the Indonesian green bean company PWN!

PWN is the abbreviation of Pawani Coffee Company, a famous Indonesian green bean merchant, and "Golden Mandheling" has long been registered as a trademark by PWN, so the words "Golden Mandheling" have become exclusive to PWN. In the past, Golden Mandheling sold on the market rarely mentioned PWN (Pawani), mostly using large bean size and few defects as selling points, and most did not label it "Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling," only referring to PWN's screening system for Golden Mandheling coffee beans. Strictly speaking, these Mandheling can at most be called "Mandheling G1 18 mesh."

The Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee beans sold by Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) all come from PWN Coffee Company. It is not difficult to verify whether the Front Street Mandheling coffee beans you purchased are genuine. Each bag of Golden Mandheling coffee has a burlap sack with a unique number and corresponding certification. As long as the seller can provide these proofs, it can be shown to be genuine. (Golden Mandheling burlap sacks come in only one specification: 30 kg.)

How does the PWN green bean company screen Golden Mandheling coffee beans?

Everyone knows that Indonesian green coffee beans use the wet-hulled processing method. Because the half-hard, half-soft wet green beans are easily crushed when the mucilage parchment layer is removed, the beans are damaged and split into a shape like a sheep's hoof, commonly known as sheep-hoof beans. Although these sheep-hoof beans are not defective beans, in PWN's view they are not attractive enough in appearance, so they must be screened out to give everyone a neat and uniform impression.

You might think that coffee beans of 18 mesh or above, no more than 3 defective beans in 300 g of green coffee beans, and the removal of sheep-hoof beans are already very strict, but PWN can go even further: after four manual screenings, the beans are uniformly put into a machine for density and color sorting, ultimately presenting Mandheling coffee beans with uniform color and uniform bean shape. This means that in order to ensure the excellence of its Golden Mandheling, the PWN green bean company carries out 5 screenings.

What is the story with Golden Mandheling coffee on the market that is not from PWN?

Many Golden Mandheling coffees on the market are Mandheling coffee beans of 18 mesh or above selected from beans also graded G1 by green bean merchants in order to sell at a high price. Some even select three times to ensure the appearance looks close to Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee. The appearance can indeed pass as the real thing, but what about the taste? Front Street obtained several coffee beans also called Golden Mandheling for a blind test, and all baristas participating in the cupping could identify Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling, because the cleanliness is something counterfeit Golden Mandheling cannot imitate.

How can you tell whether the Golden Mandheling you bought comes from PWN?

Two key points: the factory certificate provided by PWN, and the clear PWN company logo on the burlap sack of Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling green beans. If you are not sure whether what you bought is authentic PWN Mandheling, you might as well ask the seller to provide the certificate or the coffee burlap sack. The burlap sacks and certificates of the Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling sold by Front Street can all be seen at Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) stores.

What coffee variety are Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans?

Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans use the Ateng coffee variety, which is actually what we often hear called Catimor.

Catimor was created in 1959, when the Portuguese moved the Brazilian Bourbon mutation Caturra to East Timor and crossed it with Timor, which has Robusta lineage. It has extremely high disease resistance and is 3 times the productivity of Typica. During the leaf rust crisis, the Indonesian government did not only introduce Robusta (whose flavor is far from Arabica), but also introduced Timor to East Timor, intending to replace Typica. Later, after investigation by experts, it was found that a batch of Timor seeds introduced by the Indonesian government in 1980 was mixed with some Catimor seeds. This batch of seeds was planted in Aceh in northern Sumatra, and the region in Indonesia where Catimor was first detected was central Aceh, so locals also call Catimor Ateng, taken from Aceh Tengah (Central Aceh).

How does Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) roast Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans?

Yangjia 800N, charge amount 480 g. Heat the roaster to 200°C and charge, set the damper to 3, after 1 minute adjust the heat to 160°C, keep the damper unchanged, roast to 5'40'', temperature 148°C, the bean surface turns yellow, the grassy smell completely disappears, dehydration is complete, adjust the heat to 140°C, change the damper to 4; at 9'40'', the bean surface shows ugly wrinkles and dark patches, and the toast aroma 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. At 9'54'' first crack begins, reduce the heat to 60°C, set the damper to 5, and drop the beans at 204.5°C.

How do you brew Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee beans so they taste good?

Front Street's understanding of brewing Mandheling coffee is to express a mellow yet clean mouthfeel, highlighting caramel, chocolate, and its signature herbal aroma, and not wanting unpleasant bitterness to appear in Front Street Mandheling black coffee. Front Street will explain the choice of equipment and various important brewing parameters, using Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling for demonstration.

Front Street recommends using freshly roasted coffee beans for brewing, so you can experience the coffee's rich flavors to the greatest extent. The coffee beans shipped by Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) are all within 5 days of roasting, because Front Street deeply understands that the freshness of coffee beans has a huge impact on flavor. Front Street's roasting philosophy is "freshly roasted good coffee," so that every customer who places an order receives the freshest coffee when they get it. The resting period for coffee is about 4-7 days, so when customers receive it, it is exactly at its best flavor.

In choosing the dripper, Front Street chose the Kono Meimon dripper. The biggest feature of the Kono dripper is that the ribs extend from the bottom to the middle, while the upper part is a smooth dripper wall, so when the filter paper fits the dripper, water cannot "secretly" bypass the coffee grounds and slip away, improving the mellow thickness of the mouthfeel.

The coffee dose used by Front Street is still 15 g. More coffee powder is not necessarily better, nor is less necessarily better; it depends specifically on the dripper size. Front Street uses a 1-2 cup dripper, and a dose of 15-20 g is a reasonable brewing range. Brewing outside this range will be somewhat difficult.

For the brewing coffee-to-water ratio, Front Street recommends using 1:15. Although some suggest using 1:13 or an even smaller coffee-to-water ratio, Front Street has stated in previous articles that concentration and mellow thickness are not necessarily related, and that too strong a coffee can cause discomfort. Therefore, using a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio can also very well express Mandheling's mellow mouthfeel.

For the coffee grind size, Front Street uses 70% passing through a No. 20 sieve. The grind size for brewing Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee should be slightly coarser than that for light-roasted coffee beans, because Golden Mandheling is dark roasted, making its structure looser and more likely to absorb water and release coffee substances. If ground to the fineness of light-roasted beans, it is easy to brew out burnt bitterness; if ground coarser, the coffee becomes thin and tasteless, with a mouthfeel as thin as water.

For the water temperature, Front Street recommends brewing at 87-88°C. For the same reason as with grind size, too high a water temperature tends to produce burnt bitterness, while too low a water temperature makes the coffee bland and also produces unpleasant sourness.

The brewing method uses a three-stage pouring method. Dividing into three pours can better express the mellow mouthfeel and caramel sweetness of Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling coffee. The specific water distribution is: the first stage, bloom with 30 ml, which fully wets the coffee grounds and allows degassing, so that the coffee's flavor substances can be better extracted later; the second stage, pour 100 ml; the final stage, pour 95 ml, enhancing the coffee's sweetness and overall expressing a substantial, mellow mouthfeel, with caramel sweetness and chocolate, nutty flavors.

Flavor and mouthfeel description of Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling:

Sweet herbs, cinnamon-like spices, orange and pomelo citrus peel notes, mellow and rich sweetness, creamy walnut chocolate. The fruit acidity is restrained and gentle, the aroma carries a strong melon sweetness, and as the temperature drops, herbal notes emerge, with faint spices. The herbal aroma is mellow with a rich sweetness.

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