Asia and Oceania
INDONESIA
8,00 to 1,800 masl | 6,679,000 bags | Giling Basah and washed
Indonesia, located between the Indian and Pacific oceans, is made up of more than 13,000 volcanic islands. Coffee is grown on several of these islands, and a few of them are often treated as their own origin. It’s not uncommon to see “Sumatra” on a bag of coffee instead of “Indonesia.” Roasters may even go a step further by naming the region or washing station within the island. Because of this, I will break down this origin by some of its most popular islands.
Sulawesi
The Indonesian island of Sulawesi has been a specialty-coffee origin since the beginning of the specialty coffee movement. Most coffee is grown in the Tana Toraja region, located in mountainous South Sulawesi, by small indigenous producers. Many producers in this region tend to use a unique method (called Giling Basah, or “wet hulling”) for washing the beans, which (at the risk of oversimplifying the process) leaves the beans with a greater moisture content when they leave the farm than other processes do. This method results in coffee with a heavy body and funky earthy notes, including cedar and green pepper, that tend to divide the acidity-loving specialty coffee community. However, more common washing techniques were introduced in the 1970s to help bring out the acidity, sweetness, and fruitiness of Sulawesi beans and provide a more standard way to experience Sulawesi coffee in the specialty world. You may see both kinds available at coffee shops. Other growing regions on the island include Mamasa, Gowa, and Utara.
Sumatra
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia. Like Sulawesi’s crop, much of the coffee produced here is processed with the Giling Basah method, which results in earthy flavors, such as herbs, mushrooms, spices, and mustiness. Again, this goes against the typical acid-forward profile of much of today’s specialty coffee. But because this coffee has low acidity and is often quite smooth, it might be a good option for those of you who don’t care for acidic qualities all that much. Another unique characteristic of Sumatran coffee beans is their distinctive blue-green color (which can throw off less-experienced roasters and sometimes cause them to overroast the beans). Most Sumatran coffee is produced in the northern highlands. You may see the region of Mandailing listed on a bag of coffee, but this is actually the name of an indigenous tribe that grows coffee in Tapanuli. Other growing regions include Aceh, Lintong, and Lampung.
Java
Java, another Indonesian island, is the birthplace of both typica and one-half of the classic Mocha-Java blend (which you’ll still see for sale, despite its being one of the world’s oldest blends). In fact, Java is so deeply steeped in coffee’s history that the word itself is a slang term for coffee. However, most arabica production in Java (and Indonesia as a whole) has been replaced by robusta, and in Java’s case, most high-quality production has been moved to fellow isles Sumatra and Sulawesi. Still, there is some specialty coffee production in the eastern highlands on the Ijen Plateau. Java also produces a significant amount of kopi luwak, the most expensive coffee in the world, which is processed in the intestines of an animal called a civet and then collected as droppings. (For what it’s worth, most people seem to think it tastes as you might expect: like something that belongs in the toilet.)
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
1,300 to 1,900 masl | 796,000 bags | mostly washed
Papua New Guinea (PNG) occupies half of the island of New Guinea in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Although it only produces about 1 percent of the world’s arabica (most of it organic), PNG is an interesting origin for specialty coffees; cups tend to be delicate and light bodied, and to vary in flavor from chocolate to citrus depending on the growing region. About 40 percent of PNG’s population grows coffee, and 95 percent of them tend tiny plots of a few hundred coffee trees max (but often even fewer than that). These smallholders produce an estimated 90 percent of all of PNG’s coffee. As old estates dissolve and small producers become more organized and skilled, coffee in PNG has improved in quality and can sometimes achieve excellent results. Even so, there is very little infrastructure in PNG, and the process of selecting which cherries to harvest tends to be poor, which can lower the overall quality of the coffee. Growing regions include the Western Highlands/Wahgi Valley (you may see bags labeled “Kunjin” or “Ulya,” which are regional processing mills), the Eastern Highlands, and Chimbu (often spelled Simbu) Valley.
YEMEN (MOCHA)
1,500 to 2,000+ masl | 20,000 bags | mostly natural
A small country on the Arabian Peninsula just across the way from Ethiopia, Yemen has been growing and exporting coffee since close to the beginning of the coffee trade. Its most famous coffee, Mocha, which has nothing to do with mocha drinks or chocolate, originally got its name from the port city Mokha on the country’s western coast. This high-quality coffee is the other half of the famous Mocha-Java blend. Many Yemeni coffees grown today are heirloom varieties, similar to what Ethiopia grows, that are processed via traditional methods. Most of the coffee is produced on the west side of the country, and coffee professionals often describe the flavor profile as “wild,” with bright acidity and complexity. However, Yemeni coffee is not all that common in the United States. Exports from Yemen have shrunk over the years as deadly conflict in the country has disrupted its coffee industry, but producers continue to cope and grow with remarkable resilience. In 2015, a group of Yemeni coffee exporters escaped Yemen to attend the annual SCA conference and reintroduce specialty Yemeni coffee to the world. As individuals and organizations help to build the infrastructure necessary for cash-crop specialty coffee cultivation, we may start to see more Yemeni selections on US shelves.
PROCESS
Once a crop of coffee cherries is harvested, the green coffee beans need to be separated from the cherry flesh. The process by which the cherry is removed can greatly affect the taste of the beans. Here are some of the common methods of processing coffee and how they affect flavor:
•Washed/Wet Process. At base, this means that water was used to remove the coffee cherry from the beans. Typically, it works like this: the coffee cherries are fed into a machine (called a pulping machine or a depulper) that removes the outer skin of the cherry. The coffee is then transferred into tanks or troughs of water, where they are left to ferment. The length of the fermentation process and the amount of water used can vary depending on region and producer, but the goal is the same: to remove the rest of the cherry flesh from the bean. After fermentation, the remaining fruit is broken down enough to be washed away with water. Once the beans are clean, they are removed from the water and set out to dry in the sun. The beans are raked periodically so they dry evenly and slowly. Some producers mechanically dry the beans, especially if they grow in an area that doesn’t have a long dry season. (Coffee professionals tend to consider this a less desirable method, as it dries the beans more quickly, and research suggests that a slow drying process is directly related to how well green beans retain their flavor.) Most coffee in the world is washed. Washing tends to result in a bean that allows the subtle characteristics, including acidity, of the terroir and the varietal to shine through in the cup. It’s also a highly controlled process, which makes for consistent lots. Removing the fruit before the beans are dried reduces the chance of something going wrong.
Washed Does Not Mean Clean
I’ve heard (questionable) roasters claim to consumers that washed coffee is cleaner than natural coffee—and that it somehow reduces that number of toxins in coffee beans. This is garbage talk that is based on no empirical evidence. The term washed refers only to the fact that water is used during processing. It’s true that natural coffee is at greater risk for defects, such as mold and rot, during processing, but proper care eliminates those risks. Besides, defective coffee would likely never make it to the roaster, and if it did, the roaster would know right away that the coffee is off and would not sell it.
•Natural/Dry Process. Before the machinery described earlier was invented,
all coffees were naturally processed. In this method, the fruit is not removed from the bean after the coffee cherries are picked. Instead, the cherry is dried fully intact until the fruit dries out enough to be removed by a machine. Because of this, the flavors from the cherry—which are washed away in the wet-process method—actually make their way into the bean during drying. As a result, the flavor of natural coffees is quite distinct: more fruity notes and less acidity than washed coffees. For producers, natural coffees can be challenging to perfect—they require extra time and attention because mold, rot, and other defects love to sleep beneath warm, wet layers of coffee and impart their off flavors.
•Pulped Natural/Honey. The pulped natural method was introduced in Brazil and has spread to Central America, where—particularly in Costa Rica—it is called miel (Spanish for honey). It is similar to the washed process, except that after going through the pulping machine to remove the outer skin, the coffee is sent directly to the drying phase with part of its fruit still intact. Technically speaking, a true pulped natural/honey coffee is dried with all of the fruit still in place, but there are now many variations of this process that are described with different terms, such as red honey, yellow honey, black honey, and semiwashed. The difference among these generally relates to the amount of fruit that is left intact before drying, and the exact processing method can vary greatly from producer to producer. To make things more complicated, it doesn’t seem like the industry has settled on firm definitions for these terms, so it’s all a bit fluid. As you may guess, honey coffees have some characteristics of washed coffees and some characteristics of natural coffees. They tend to retain the acidity of washed coffees and the body, sweetness, and earthiness of natural coffees but without the strong fruit flavors.
ROAST
Before coffee beans hit store shelves, they need to be roasted. All green coffee beans are kind of boring—they don’t smell or taste like much. But it’s not their fault—they are largely insoluble, meaning all of their flavor compounds are inaccessible to us. Roasting not only makes coffee soluble (i.e., able to be extracted) but also creates new, wonderful flavors and aromas. More likely than not, you’re already familiar with the concept of light, medium, and dark roasted coffee. But how do roasters choose how light or dark to roast the beans? And what do light and dark mean in terms of flavor?
The first thing to realize is that the terms dark, medium, and light do not correlate to some magical roasting time. In general, roasters treat each lot of beans differently by testing a series of roast profiles until the desired result is achieved. Like Q graders, roasters taste each batch and decide what roast profile (a combination of time and temperature) is best for that particular lot of beans. That being said, craft roasters tend to favor roast profiles that highlight certain characteristics of the bean that develop based on where it was grown or how it was processed. This kind of thinking reflects the methods of other artisanal industries, like wine and cheese making.
The science behind coffee roasting is not fully understood, and you can consider the art of roasting to still be in its infancy. What’s becoming clear, especially as roasters continue to learn and experiment, is that the idea of “light” and “dark” roast is too simplistic, and it might not be the best way for home brewers to think about coffee as it relates to their preferences. It’s really the roast profile—the manipulation of time and temperature—that determines flavor. However, the idea of roast profile is a bit hairy to explain, so I asked Joe Marrocco, who works at Café Imports in Minneapolis and is a member of the Roasters Guild Executive Council, to shed some light on the subject for us:
A roaster looking for a lively, intensely bright, and complex cup of coffee will likely roast their coffee quickly and to a lower temperature, much like a person who is baking cookies would treat a cookie they want to stay gooey and more like the dough. A roaster who wishes to achieve a mellower, sweeter, and more comforting expression from a coffee would roast the coffee to a higher temperature for a longer amount of time. Finally, a roaster who wants to taste more of their input on the coffee, and less of where the coffee comes from, and who is looking for those dark-chocolate or smoky tones, would want to go even further in the process. Darker roasts are done to much higher temperatures, and so have those charred, heavily cooked flavors.
Generally speaking, the longer and hotter a coffee bean is roasted, the more its flavor changes. Heat exposure tends to cause change on a chemical level, and coffee beans are no different. As green coffee beans are brought to temperature, a few different chemical reactions take place, each of which contributes to the flavor profile of the bean. Very briefly, here are the reactions and stages of roasting:
•Maillard reaction. This reaction happens between 150°C and 200°C (302°F to 392°F) and is responsible for a large chunk of the flavor and brown color of roasted coffee. The Maillard reaction is a browning process (actually, it’s a lot of different browning processes; Maillard is an umbrella term), but it is not a burning process—it’s a chemical reaction between the amino acids and the reducing sugars in green coffee beans. This is the same reaction that happens during other cooking processes, such as searing meat. All that yummy, crusty goodness of a good sear? That’s from the Maillard reaction. The changes to the amino acids and sugars add new flavors (particularly savory flavors rather than sweet flavors) or enhance those already in the beans.
•Caramelization. Yum, yum, yum, you know what this stage is! When beans are roasted between 170°C and 200°C (338°F to 392°F), you can think of them as a crème brûlée. Coffee beans contain a fair amount of sugar, and at this stage, those sugars start to brown (i.e., caramelize), releasing acidic and aromatic compounds. These acids and aromatics contribute greatly to the flavor (see chapter 5) and balance of the cup, which is the goal. At the beginning of the process, caramelization deepens the complexity of the flavors. However, counterintuitively, the more the sugars caramelize, the more the perceived sweetness of the beans decreases. This means that later in the process, caramelization starts contributing bitter flavors, which can obscure the other flavors in the beans. Caramelization continues into the first crack.
•First crack. At about 196°C (385°F), the coffee beans start cracking, and they sound kind of like popcorn. At this point, the beans are under a lot of pressure—both the Maillard reaction and the caramelization process produce volatile gases that add to the water vapor and other gases that have been forming from all of the chemical activity in the beans. When these reach a critical mass, the beans literally crack open to relieve the pressure (they also double in size). Roasters that aim to highlight the unique flavors of the beans (sometimes called the origin character) and the “liveliness” Joe described usually roast until somewhere between the first and second crack.
•Second crack. The beans continue to cook, and some start to show the first signs of the second crack, which happens around 212°C to 218°C (414°F to 424°F). This time, the cracking sound comes from the walls of the bean cracking open. The heat is breaking down the structure of the bean, and the second crack is essentially the sound of the bean collapsing. Most of the beans will crack a second time by 230°C (446°F). At this point, they are usually medium to medium-dark in color and a bit shiny from the released oils.
If a roaster continues past the second crack (after all of the beans have cracked), the beans plunge deeper and deeper into dark roast territory. They continue to get darker and shinier, and the delicate acids that contribute to brightness continue breaking down into acids that taste more bitter and more robust. In other words, the beans start to take on more flavors associated with roasting (sometimes called the roast character), like the chocolaty or smoky notes that Joe described. The sugars start to burn. As the roast continues, the beans become more carbonized, like tiny little bricks of charcoal. At this point, the roasted coffee tastes like any other burnt thing. If the beans continue to roast, they will eventually catch fire, as organic matter is wont to do.
For whatever
reason, people tend to fall into one of two camps: those who enjoy the flavors associated with the beans themselves and those who prefer the flavors associated with the roasting process. As craft coffee pioneer George Howell said: “Dark roast covers things like a heavy sauce.” Following that analogy, people prefer either a dark or a light roast in the same way that they prefer either the sauce of a meat dish or the meat itself. Another way to think of it is by comparing wine and whiskey. Some people like the terroir of the plant associated with wine. Other people like the aging/barreling process associated with whiskey.
One certainly isn’t better than the other; it depends on preference. Starbucks and other second-wave shops have popularized roasts that tend to favor roast character, and I would argue that the general public associates specialty (that is, high-quality) coffee with those flavors, even today. These roasts tend to be consistent, day after day, year after year, which is an appealing quality. But Starbucks-brand specialty coffee has also been, for many people, a stepping stone into the world of craft coffee, which tends to celebrate the natural nuances found in coffee beans by, as we’ve seen, experimenting with different roasts. In my mind, these differing roasting techniques are one of the most tangible ways craft roasters distinguish themselves beneath the umbrella of specialty coffee.
It’s certainly worth mentioning that coffee isn’t automatically good just because it’s roasted quickly at lower temperatures. First of all, such roast profiles tend to taste more acidic, and even pleasant acidity can take some getting used to. These beans are also less soluble than their roastier counterparts, which means the coffee particles don’t dissolve as easily in water, and it can take a bit more coaxing to get the flavors into the cup. As Mr. Howell noted, roasts like this also don’t mask anything, so any small defect that might have been obscured by a longer roast time could be laid bare in the cup. Additionally, there is such a thing as too light a roast, in which the beans aren’t given enough time with the heat to develop good flavors. These beans might taste like wood or bread—and not in a good way.
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