Sumatra Ketiara Gayo ORGANIC

About This Coffee

This organic Indonesian coffee is grown by families in the Aceh region, located on the northern part of the island of Sumatra. The farms are small - a few hectares on average - and are spread out on the slopes around the highland areas around Lake Tawar. Sumatra's coffee is a complicated story, largely because the farms are small and the humid climate makes long-term drying of the coffee in its protective shells impractical. The coffee's post-processing therefore goes through many hands before it reaches its final, fully dried state. This in turn gives Sumatra coffee a completely unique taste, no other country's coffee has such a spicy character and taste of powerful chocolate, complex herbs and berries. The coffee has been processed using the wet-hulled method, which is unique to Indonesia. The method is locally called Giling-Basah. The method involves hand-picking the berries during the harvest season and then peeling them on or near the farm on small hand-cranked or motorized peeling machines. The coffee is fermented overnight in small tanks, buckets or bags and washed with clean water the following morning. The coffee is then sun-dried for between half a day and two days, depending on the weather. When the coffee leaves the farm, the moisture content is between 30 and 40%. The coffee is sold from the producer to a single processing plant (often by the village's collectors), where the coffee is peeled down to its seed (the coffee bean itself). The beans are laid out to dry on tarpaulins or patios, where they decrease in size and reach 14-15% moisture content, before being bought up by the exporters, most of whom are based in Medan, who finish drying to a moisture content of 12-13%, sort the coffee and prepare it for export. All the steps above are a significant reason why coffee from Sumatra is unlike anything else. Unique and exotic!