Sumatra Ketiara Gayo ORGANIC

This organic Indonesian coffee is grown by families in the Aceh region, located in the north of the island of Sumatra. Farms are small - a few hectares on average - and are scattered on the slopes of the highland areas around Lake Tawar. Sumatra's coffee is a complicated story, largely because of the small size of the farms and the humid climate that makes prolonged drying of the coffee in its protective shells impractical. The coffee's post-processing therefore passes through many hands before it reaches its final, fully dried state. This in turn gives Sumatra coffee a unique flavour, 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 hull method, which is unique to Indonesia. The method is known locally as Giling-Basah. The method involves hand-picking the berries at harvest time and then peeling them on or near the farm on small hand-cranked or motorised peeling machines, called hullers. 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 processing plant (often by village collectors), where the coffee is peeled down to its seed (the coffee bean itself). The beans are laid out to dry on patios, where they reduce in size and reach 14-15% moisture content, before being bought by exporters, most of whom are based in Medan, who finish drying to a moisture content of 12-13%. They then sort the coffee and prepare it for export. All of the above steps are a major reason why Sumatran coffee is unlike any other. Unique and exotic!