Sumatra Aulia Kahpi Wet-Hulled

In 2019, Aulia Kahfi place 9^th in the Sumatra Prestige Cup for his excellent Wet-Hulled lot. We are thrilled to continue purchasing from him.

Aulia cultivates coffee on Rakyat Farm, which he inherited from his family. He has been involved in coffee production since his early teens but has always had a unique interest in specialty coffee. Since specialty coffee was not in high demand in his area during his teenage years, Aulia spent several years mining and selling Vesuvianite, a precious stone often found near volcanoes. He has since returned to coffee production.

Now in his early thirties, Aulia is entrepreneurial and enterprising. Using an old van or his friend’s car, he has expanded his business by purchasing a few bags at a time from neighboring farmers. He collects and processes ripe cherry from farmers in the Lukup Sabun, Pantan Sile and Ratawali neighborhoods. He’s also recently started buying cherry from Gegarang (Jagong Jeget). 

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.

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%. 

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.