I need to find an Indonesian coffee I like.
Indonesian coffee, to generalise, can handle a much darker roast than many other origins. The result is a caffeine-rich, dark-roasted, full-bodied coffee – nice to have from time to time for variety’s sake.
I’ve been struggling slightly to find one though. I started off with Sumatran Mandheling from HasBean. I really liked the taste – in paticular a lovely syrupy note that is characteristic of a good Sumatran. The trouble was the quality of the green beans. It got to the point where I was having to cull 30-40 bad beans out of a 250g batch before I could roast it. Maybe my 2kg bag was a bad batch for some reason, but the time spent culling put me off.
So I’ve moved to Celebes Kalosi. The bean prep is much much better. Almost no defects. The taste is good too, and it can nicely handle a dark roast. The trouble is, good though it is, I found the taste a little bland for my liking. Invariably, when you roast darkly, the roast determines the taste more than the origin, but I knew that Indonesians can do better than that from my time with Mandheling.
Then Steve got a new one in: Sulotco Sulawesi. So I ordered 250g green coffee to roast and try. We’ll see…
As I say, the search is on…
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