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Home  Articles What Makes Sumatra Coffees Taste The Way They Do?
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What Makes Sumatra Coffees Taste The Way They Do? |
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Tuesday, 02 August 2005 |
By Kenneth Davids
from Coffee Review
Coffee aficionados often assume that coffees from various origins taste
different purely because they are grown in different climates and soils
or produced by different botanical varieties of Coffea arabica.
Obviously both assumptions are true. However, we often overlook the
influence of how coffee beans are processed, or stripped of their fruit
and dried. This procedure has a key impact on how coffees ultimately
taste in the cup. I'm particularly convinced that the unique cup
characteristics of traditional Sumatra coffees — their heavy body and
deep dimension ‹ owe more to the unorthodox methods Sumatrans use to
remove the fruit from the coffee and dry it than they do to
characteristics imparted by soil, climate and botany. Certainly
Sumatras processed by the standard large-scale wet method, like Gayo
Mountain Washed, tend to medium body and a rather delicate flavor when
compared to the heavy-bodied, tawny-beaned Mandhelings and Lintongs
processed and dried by traditional methods.
Infinite Nuance
Thirty years ago many of us in the infant specialty coffee business
assumed that there were only two ways to process coffee: by the dry
method, in which the coffee beans or seeds are dried inside the fruit,
or by the wet (or washed) method, in which the fruit is removed from
the bean in careful steps before drying. In fact, there appears to be
an almost infinite variety of nuances, compromises and variations in
processing, almost all of which affect flavor.
And Sumatra is home to several of these compromises and variations. The
many mysteries and intricacies f Sumatra processing and drying
procedures are too complex and problematic to go into in detail here.
But it does appear that all Sumatra arabica coffees have their skins
removed immediately after picking. In other words, no Sumatra arabicas
are dry-processed in the traditional sense of the term, meaning none
are dried in the whole fruit as are traditional Brazils, Ethiopia
Harrars, and Yemens.
The Sumatra Processing Mystery
But what happens to Sumatra coffee after the skins are removed from the
fruit but before the beans are dried? All of the small Sumatran farmers
I visited some years ago proceeded using a simple, backyard wet method.
After removing the skins from the coffee fruit using simple (often
homemade) machines, they fermented the slimy beans overnight without
adding water (a procedure called dry-fermenting), then washed off the
ferment-loosened fruit pulp in water from a creek or well before
putting the coffee out to dry. This simple procedure technically
qualifies these coffees as washed or wet-processed coffees.
However, the simply backyard scrubbing hardly removed all of the pulp,
and some remained in contact with the beans, promoting a ferment taste
that, in traditional Sumatras, can range from fruity, chocolaty and
complex to flat-out rotten.
(By the way, several second-hand accounts sent to me by others describe
Sumatran farmers who remove the pulp from the skinned fruit by either
rubbing the beans on a mat or rubbing them with sand. It is not clear
whether this mat-or-sand removal process happens after the coffee is
dried with the pulp still attached (which would make these coffees
semi-dry processed), or after the pulpy coffee has been fermented
overnight, as I witnessed.)
Finally, and still further complicating the picture, are at least one
or two larger Sumatra mills that process the coffee by what we might
call the "classic" semi-dry method. I am told that these mills proceed
much like large mills do in parts of Brazil: remove the skins from the
coffee fruit, dry the beans in the slimy pulp, and then remove both
dried pulp and inner skins by mechanical milling.
Three Roads to the Same Cup
Regardless of which of these three methods is pursued, note that the
sweet, fruity pulp remains in contact with the bean without dilution
for a considerable period of time, undoubtedly contributing to the
deep-toned, heavy-bodied profile of traditional Sumatras, while
blunting any tendencies to dry, acidy brightness.
The Final Flavor Twist
For a final flavor twist, we have the unorthodox Sumatran drying
procedures. Small- grower Sumatra coffees, rather than being put out to
dry once and decisively, appear to be dried in stages, first for a few
hours by the growers, then for a day or two longer by a middleman, then
for a third and final time in the ort city of Medan by exporters. This
haphazard drying procedure is undoubtedly one source of the hard,
mildewed taste of inferior Sumatras, since it allows plenty of time for
development of musty or other hard taste defects.
On the other hand, it also might also be a factor in the development of
the heavy body of the best traditional Sumatras. Furthermore, when the
musty tones are mild and layered atop a basically sweet cup, we get the
intriguing flavor notes that many professionals and aficionados admire
in traditional Sumatras: malt, spice, smoke, new leather, pipe tobacco,
and (when the musty coffees have been dried directly on the ground)
leaf, humus and earth.
The Scotch Whiskeys of Coffee
All of this layering of fermented fruit and rich mildew-cum-spice, plus
a syrupy mouthfeel and full body, are what Alfred Peet and Erna Knutsen
valued when they first introduced premium Sumatras to the fledgling
American specialty coffee industry many years ago. To me, the proper
analogy for this great origin is Scotch whiskeys and their peaty,
slightly fruity, smoky complexity, not wines. Save the wine analogy for
Costa Ricas or Kenyas.
So far as I can tell, this richly ambiguous complex of flavor notes
continues to be what American professionals and aficionados look for in
Sumatras. I hope the traditional Sumatra character survives the
well-meaning, thankfully sporadic efforts of commodity coffee people
and cupping purists to improve it out of existence. So far as I am
concerned, we should be figuring out how to refine and systematize the
traditional Sumatra character rather than turning Sumatras into a weak
imitation of other origins. Certainly fine Sumatras attract higher
wholesale prices than most clean, high-grown Central America coffees.
It's not because the Sumatras better, but because they impress in a
different, and often fascinating, way.
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