About This Coffee
This wet-hulled coffee is grown by smallholders with an average of 1 hectare. Most farmers are members of cooperatives that support them in producing Organic and Fairtrade Organic (FTO) coffees. The region offers ideal coffee-growing conditions, with high altitudes, fertile soils, and a temperate climate. As an archipelago of approximately 17,500 islands, Indonesia boasts immense biodiversity and a variety of microclimates, all contributing to its unique coffee production. A significant development in Sumatra is the increasing formation of farmer cooperatives. In the past, individual farmers had limited bargaining power to secure better prices for their coffee. By organizing into cooperatives, they can now share resources, arrange training, and negotiate better prices collectively.
Cultivation
Most farms are small, averaging around 1 hectare and they primarily cultivate Abyssinia, Ateng, Gayo 1 and Timtim varieties. 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. Besides coffee, many farmers work as laborers on nearby tea plantations after the coffee harvest. Tea is another prominent crop in the region, with large tea plantations often located near coffee farms. When the harvest is finished, coffee farmers will go there and pick leaves under contracted labor.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
One defining feature of Sumatran coffee is the wet-hulled process, known as giling basah, unique to Indonesia. This process arose out of necessity due to the region's high humidity, which prevents coffee beans from drying adequately before hulling.
After handpicking cherry, farmers process their cherry using the traditional wet hulling (giling basah) method. Following harvest, cherry is pulped at or near the farm, on small hand-cranked or motorized pulpers. Some farmers sell their cherry to a local collector who either processed the cherry themselves or sells it to a processor or wet mill. The coffee is fermented for approximately 12 hours (in small tanks, buckets or bags) and washed with clean water the following morning. Parchment is sun-dried for between half a day and two days, depending on the weather, to allow for skin drying which eases the removal of parchment.
At this juncture the moisture content is between 30-40%. Farmers deliver their parchment to a collector. Collectors may either wet hull the parchment themselves or sell the parchment on to someone who will. These steps become an essential part of the process here because a wet hulling machine, though slightly different, requires a similar investment to a dry huller. Wet hullers are larger, require more power and run at a faster speed than a traditional dry huller. Few, if any, individual farmers have their own hullers.
After hulling, the coffee seed is whitish and pliable and is called labu. It is laid out to dry on tarps or patios, where it reduces in size and moisture decreases to 14-15%. This stage the green coffee is known as asalan—unsorted and with defects. Much of the internal commercial trade is for asalan. Exporters, will typically finish the drying down to 12-13%, sort and prepare for shipment.
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.