How Does Coffee Beans Process Shape Mandheling and Huakui Flavor?
Sumatra Mandheling and Ethiopian Hambela Huakui sit at opposite ends of the flavor map. Mandheling is thick, low in acidity and heavy in the mouth, with chocolate and syrup notes, reflecting Indonesia's wet-hulling method. Huakui is floral and fruity, with mango, jackfruit and honey tones, the result of Ethiopian natural processing and the arabica variety behind it.
Indonesia's arabica plantings were nearly wiped out by coffee rust in 1877, and Robusta now accounts for about 90 percent of the country's total production, making Sumatra Mandheling a relatively rare arabica. Huakui comes from Ethiopia, where the coffee beans process and variety combine to emphasize bright acidity. Roasting and brewing parameters are adjusted accordingly so each cup shows its own character.
Indonesian Sumatra Mandheling and Ethiopian Hambela Huakui are typical representatives of full-bodied and floral-fruity coffees, respectively. Front Street Coffee has been deeply engaged in the coffee field for many years. This article will systematically sort out the flavor differences and respective charms of these two coffees from origin background, variety characteristics, processing methods to roasting and brewing parameters, helping coffee lovers more clearly understand the full-bodied richness of Mandheling and the fruity profile of Huakui, and find the cup that suits their taste.
Front Street has always been a loyal fan of Mandheling coffee, while at the Front Street Dongshankou store, coffees from Africa Ethiopia are the most favored choice among friends, such as washed Yirgacheffe, sun-dried Huakui, Gesha Village, etc.
When it comes to the differences in flavor and mouthfeel between Mandheling and Huakui, Front Street feels this distinction is very clear. Mandheling coffee can be called one of the fullest-bodied coffees in the world, and it can also be said to be the type of coffee that the general public perceives as on the bitter side. It has a rich aroma, a thick mouthfeel, and a strong taste, with hints of chocolate and syrup. While Huakui coffee comes from Ethiopia. Ethiopian coffee usually presents obvious floral and fruity tones, and Huakui coffee in particular has prominent tropical fruit flavors such as mango, jackfruit, floral notes, and honey, like a cup of fruity floral tea. It can also be said to be the type of coffee that people generally perceive as on the acidic side. For this reason, Front Street believes that the taste of Mandheling and Huakui is significantly different.
Mandheling Coffee
In the 17th century AD, the Dutch first introduced Arabica seedlings to Ceylon and Indonesia. Ceylon is now Sri Lanka. In 1877, a large-scale disaster swept across the Indonesian islands, and coffee rust almost destroyed all coffee trees. Helplessly, people could only abandon the Arabica they had planted for many years and instead introduce Robusta coffee trees with extremely strong disease resistance from Africa.
Today, Indonesia is a major coffee-producing country, with main producing areas distributed in Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi. Robusta accounts for 90% of total production of all types. Sumatra Mandheling, however, belongs to the rare Arabica category. These coffee trees grow on hillsides at altitudes between 750 and 1,500 meters. The unique and mysterious Sumatran terroir gives Mandheling coffee a rich material foundation.
Indonesia is the world's largest archipelagic country. As early as the 18th century during the Dutch colonial period, Arabica varieties were introduced for coffee cultivation. The core producing areas are located on Sumatra Island, Java Island, and Sulawesi Island. Sumatra Island faces Java Island across the Sunda Strait to the southeast, faces the Malay Peninsula across the Strait of Malacca to the north, borders Borneo across the Karimata Strait to the east, and faces the Indian Ocean to the west.
Characteristics of Lintong Mandheling
Lintong Mandheling comes from the Lintong mountainous area in north-central Sumatra, near Lake Toba. Front Street Coffee's entry-level daily-drinking beans from the Indonesian Mandheling producing area come from here. Lintong Mandheling also uses the unique wet-hulling method, resulting in its characteristics of low acidity and high body. Front Street has Lintong Mandheling coffee and Golden Mandheling coffee .
Mandheling is located in the Lintong area in northern Sumatra Island, Indonesia, and uses the old-style fruit-tree shade-growing method. The old-style shade trees can maintain humidity and increase soil fertility, and the soil contains rich organic matter. The parchment removal of Sumatra beans rarely uses machines, which is different from Central and South America, and is also Indonesia's unique semi-washed method, called Giling Basah, namely the wet-hulling processing method. Coffee beans processed by Giling Basah have particularly low acidity and a thick body.
Mandheling coffee beans are relatively large in size and relatively hard in bean texture. Its cultivation process is very prone to defects, and after harvesting it generally must undergo extremely strict manual selection. If the control process is not strict, it is very easy to cause uneven quality. In addition, different roasting procedures will also directly affect its taste. Therefore, it has become the single-origin coffee with the most controversy. Before Blue Mountain coffee was discovered, Mandheling was once regarded as the finest among coffees. The fullness of Mandheling gives a sense of masculinity. It has moderate acidity and an extremely heavy aroma; it tastes rather bitter and has a rich body; it dares to duel and has the spirit of an American western cowboy.
Wet-hulling processing method for Mandheling coffee beans
Indonesia has year-round high temperatures and humidity, lacking long hours of sunlight, with humidity as high as 70% to 90% year-round, so relying purely on sun-drying is obviously unrealistic. For Sumatra Island, where the weather is unpredictable, even using the washed processing method makes it difficult to free up a week of sunny weather for drying, so the wet-hulling method came into being. After the previous washing process, the coffee beans with parchment are placed under the sun to dry for 1 to 2 days, bringing the moisture content of the coffee beans to 30% to 50%, and then the parchment is removed for sun drying. This can accelerate the drying speed of the coffee beans and greatly shorten the drying time.
Among all single-origin coffees, Mandheling's appearance can be said to be the ugliest. However, coffee friends say that the worse-looking Sumatran coffee beans are, the better they taste. Mandheling coffee is recognized as the fullest-bodied coffee in the world.
Mandheling Coffee Variety
Indonesia has a very long history of coffee cultivation. It used to grow Arabica. Because of leaf rust, currently 90% of the coffee beans exported by Indonesia are Robusta, and only 10% are Arabica. Front Street's Lintong Mandheling coffee variety is TimTim Ateng, and the variety listed for Golden Mandheling coffee is: Ateng. In fact, TimTim is Timor, an Arabica variety with Robusta lineage, while Ateng is Catimor, a hybrid variety of Caturra and Catimor. That variety name is just a local designation.
Ethiopian Hambela Producing Area
Ethiopian coffee beans are generally named after their producing areas, and "Huakui" is actually produced in the Hambella producing area within the Guji region of Ethiopia. Hambella is located in Guji, Ethiopia's largest coffee-producing region, and is administratively under Oromia State. The Guji producing area was once part of the Sidama producing area, but in 2010 it was made an independent new producing area by the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). The most famous coffee bean in the Guji producing area is none other than Huakui coffee beans . In the 2017 TOH (Ethiopia National Taste of Harvest Competition), it won the championship with a brilliant strawberry cream flavor, truly deserving the name Huakui. But not all coffee produced in Hambella can be called "Huakui"; only the sun-dried coffee beans from the "Buku Abel" processing station can be called Huakui.
The coffee flavor of each coffee-producing area is different. Front Street has procured more than a dozen coffees from Ethiopia, and Huakui coffee is the representative coffee of the Sidama producing area and also a popular single-origin bean at Front Street.
Huakui Coffee
Huakui coffee beans are actually the direct Chinese translation of the English word Hambella, meaning Hambella coffee beans. It was a green bean from the Sidama Hambella producing area in the 2017 TOH green bean competition (the Taste Of Harvest). It stood out with a strong strawberry and cream aroma. An unremarkable Ethiopian Hambella sun-dried coffee bean thus defeated the ever-victorious Gesha, winning the championship in that year's Ethiopian TOH sun-dried group with a high score of 88.21, making the name "Huakui" truly deserved and deeply rooted in people's hearts. This high-quality Hambella coffee bean became widely known in China under the name "Huakui."
After Huakui, the 2017 TOH sun-dried group champion, entered China, it became known to more people. It was discovered and promoted by the founder of Beijing Hongshun, who created his own coffee brand LeBunna (Hongshun Coffee) in Ethiopia. Of course, if such a wonderful name were only a flash in the pan, would that not be a pity? Therefore, afterward Hongshun continued to introduce coffee beans from the "Buku Abel" processing station in the Hambella producing area and called them Huakui 2.0, Huakui 3.0, and Huakui 3.1 to distinguish them from the previous Huakui coffee and to represent different batches or harvest seasons. At this time, Huakui coffee still maintained certain characteristics, namely that it was purchased and introduced by Hongshun, and the producing area was still locked to the "Buku Abel" processing station in Hambella. Of course, as coffee is an agricultural product, its flavor will differ from year to year.
Huakui Coffee Bean Variety
Because Ethiopia has far too many varieties, it is like a natural gene bank of Arabica. On the one hand, there are so many varieties that identification and classification are difficult. On the other hand, the Ethiopian government, out of consideration for protection, is unwilling to disclose information about these varieties, so they are collectively called Ethiopian Heirloom, meaning heirloom treasures.
Sun-dried Processing Method for Huakui Coffee Beans
Hambella is located in Ethiopia's largest coffee region, Guji, and is administratively under Oromia State. Western Hambella faces Yirgacheffe Kochere across the mountains, and its southeast and north border the Guji sub-regions of Shakiso, Uraga, and Kercha respectively. It is the highest-altitude coffee sub-region in Ethiopia, with humus-rich reddish-brown soil and an altitude of about 2,300 meters. The large temperature difference between day and night allows coffee cherries to grow slowly. Fully red cherries are picked and processed with refined sun-drying, dried on African raised beds, limited to 2 to 3 layers in thickness. According to the color changes after drying, manual hand sorting is carried out twice per day during the first 1 to 3 days of drying, removing 10% each time. After that, the beans are turned every three hours. At noon and at night, the coffee beans are covered and wrapped with thick plastic sheeting to avoid rain and dew. The degree of fermentation is accurately controlled. The whole process lasts as long as 21 days, creating the unique flavor of Huakui.
Front Street Mandheling coffee bean roasting approach and brewing parameters:
Front Street believes that the high-quality flavor of Mandheling coffee lies in the balance of acidity, sweetness, and bitterness, with high body. In roasting, Front Street chose a medium-dark roast, which can highlight the coffee beans' nutty, piney, and herbal notes. Using a KONO dripper can provide a better body. Water temperature 88°C, coffee-to-water ratio 1:15, dose 15g, grind size (75% passing through a Chinese No. 20 standard sieve).
Brewing Flavor Description
[Front Street PWN Golden Mandheling Coffee Bean Flavor]: The coffee has a varied overall layering, full-bodied and clean, with rich nutty and caramel aromas, hints of chocolate, a long finish, and high balance.
[Lintong Mandheling Coffee Bean Flavor]: On the palate there is a rich herbal aroma, dark chocolate, caramel, and a sweet aftertaste.
Front Street roasted Huakui coffee beans and brewing parameters:
Front Street Coffee noticed that the green beans of Huakui coffee have a fermented vinous aroma of coffee flowers, completely different from the grassy scent of ordinary green beans; moreover, Huakui green beans vary in size, with many pointed at the head and tail (Ethiopia Heirloom Ethiopian native varieties), and have a good moisture content of around 11%, but they are not the kind of SHB beans with very high hardness. Because the beans have high density and hardness, the dehydration time at the beginning of the front stage is extended, and the temperature is raised before first crack into first crack, preserving as much as possible the small-molecule aromatic substances such as floral notes and reducing their loss. Front Street chose a light roast. In brewing, in order to make Huakui coffee more layered and richer in mouthfeel, Front Street chose to use a V60 dripper. The V60 dripper body has guide ribs connecting the top and bottom and a large circular hole in the center, which speeds up the flow rate of water falling, while the spiral-shaped exhaust groove design lengthens the water flow path, increasing the contact time between coffee grounds and hot water. Each stream of water converges along the grooves toward the center point of the dripper, concentrating the pressure on the coffee grounds, and the extracted coffee has a richer layering.
Dripper: Hario V60, water temperature: 90°C, dose: 15 grams, coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15, grind size: medium-fine grind (80% passing through a Chinese standard No. 20 sieve)
Brewing Flavor Description
[Huakui G1] Smooth, passion fruit, fermented vinous aroma, jackfruit, strawberry.
[Huakui 2.0] The overall mouthfeel is clean, the berry aroma is more obvious, and it has nutty notes, making the mouthfeel richer.
[Huakui 3.0] Light strawberry jam, black tea tea-like body, short sweet finish.
[Huakui 3.1] Floral notes, cream, tropical fruit, caramel, long-lasting aftertaste.
[Huakui 4.0] Citrus acidity, full berry juice sensation, lemon black tea tea-like body, lasting sweetness.
[Huakui 5.0] Floral notes, the sweet-tartness of berries, citrus, and plum, mango juice, honey, with a finish of black tea's sweet fragrance.
[Small-Bean Huakui] The sweet aroma of berries, cream strawberry, passion fruit, rich fruity sweetness, full mouthfeel.
[Huakui 6.0]: Full berry juice sensation, black tea finish.
Front Street Coffee Brewing Suggestions:
Regarding coffee brewing, Front Street has always believed that the freshness of coffee beans has a great impact on coffee flavor, so the coffee beans shipped by Front Street Coffee are all within 5 days of roasting. 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 bean resting period is about 4 to 7 days, so when customers receive it, it is exactly at its best flavor.
For friends who need ground coffee, Front Street warmly reminds you: if the coffee beans have already been ground in advance, there is no need to rest the beans anymore, because during transportation, the pressure generated by carbon dioxide inside the package can also make the coffee flavor rounder, so you can immediately brew a cup after receiving the ground coffee. However, ground coffee needs to be brewed promptly, because after ground coffee contacts air, it oxidizes relatively quickly, which means the coffee flavor will dissipate relatively quickly and the coffee flavor will not be as good. Therefore, Front Street recommends buying whole beans and grinding fresh before brewing, so that you can better taste the coffee's flavor.
For friends who do not like bitterness, they may prefer Ethiopian coffee; while for friends who do not like acidity, they may prefer the taste of Mandheling or Brazilian coffee. In fact, Front Street believes that every coffee bean has its own distinctive flavor, and as long as it is the one you like, then it is the best-tasting.
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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
