About This Coffee
Aulia Kahpi submitted this Wet-Hulled coffee to the 2019 Sumatra Prestige Cup. Just 29, Aulia is entrepreneurial and enterprising. He collected and processed ripe cherry from farmers in Lukup Sabun, Pantan Sile and Ratawali neighborhoods. Aulia processes cherry in Bebesen in Aceh Tengah, a regency on the island of Sumatra.
Cultivation
Almost all farms on Sumatra are small. On average, farms are between 0.5 to 2.5 hectares. Coffee is usually the primary cash crop for farmers, but most also intercrop their trees alongside vegetables, maize and fruit. This intercropped produce will make up a substantial part of the family’s diet for the year.
In addition to growing coffee as a cash crop, many smallholder farmers also work at hired laborers at the nearby tea plantations. Tea is also a huge crop in the area. The bigger tea plantations are often near coffee farms. When the harvest is finished, coffee farmers will go there and pick leaves under contracted labor.
There are more and more initiatives by farmers on Sumatra to organize themselves into cooperatives. In the past, farmers did not have much leverage to help themselves get better prices for their cherry or parchment. When they’re in cooperatives, they can share resources, organize training and negotiate better prices.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
The wet hulling, or giling basah, process is used only in Indonesia. After handpicking ripe cherry, farmers deliver their cherry to Aulia who pulp and then ferments it overnight. After washing in clean water the following morning, Aulia sun-dries parchment for about one day, depending on the weather. THis makes it easier to remove the parchment.
At this juncture the moisture content is between 30-40%. After hulling, the coffee seed is whitish and pliable and is called labu. After hulling, Aulia lays the coffee to sun dry for 4 to 5 more days to decrease moisture content to 14-15%.
Sumatra Prestige Cup 2019
At a pilot program for Cup of Excellence in Sumatra, an international jury of coffee professionals—including our own Daniel Shewmaker, Manager Indonesia and East Timor for Sucafina, gathered to judge a wide variety of Indonesian coffees.
The Alliance for Coffee Excellence hosts Cup of Excellence (COE) competitions across dozens of coffee-producing countries in an effort to highlight and preserve quality coffee by connecting producers with importers and roasters. In many origins where COE competitions run annually, we have seen cup quality and premiums to farmers getting better year after year.
The COE format has the potential to broaden the industry’s thinking on the flavors we can expect from Indonesian coffee. Our experience has shown us that just as Indonesia is ecologically and anthropologically diverse, there is an immense—and largely untapped—potential for a wide variety of flavors in Indonesian coffees. COE can incentivize farmers to focus on meticulous harvesting, experiment with new processing techniques, plant new varieties and even construct new infrastructure for future seasons.
Coffee in Indonesia
Indonesia has a long coffee producing history, but recently their coffees have been overlooked by the specialty market. Thanks to our innovative and ever-expanding supply chain, we are proud to bring you high-quality coffees from many of Indonesia’s unique regions, accompanied by in-depth traceability information.
Indonesia is perhaps best known for its unique wet hulling process (giling basah). Though its exact origins are unclear, wet hulling most likely originated in Aceh during the late 1970s.
Wet hulling’s popularity can be attributed to producers’ need for prompt payments. It was also adopted specifically by many producers who lacked the drying infrastructure that was needed to shelter drying parchment from the high humidity and inconsistent rainfall typical in Sumatra. At higher elevations with constant humidity and unpredictable rainfall, drying can prove to be slow, risky and difficult.