Our collaborator Cássia Martinez, responsible for quality control at Cafés El Magnífico, cupper of the Cup of Excellence and Q Grader, tells us about her experience in Indonesia:
Indonesia is probably one of the most suggestive destinations for a coffee professional.
Far away, mysterious, with so many different terroirs and processes that give its coffees a distinctive and unmistakable flavor, I could, after tasting so many coffees from this archipelago, get to know first hand two of its islands and their coffees.
Thus, last February I had the great privilege of being received in Bandung, West Java, by the warm team of Klasik Beans, our supplier of Java Sunda Radiophare.
KOPI FLORIST
Kopi Florist, Bandung.
Aby, Anes and Joseph at Kopi Florist.
In 1987 a large part of the coffee trees in Java were attacked by various diseases that devastated the island’s plantations and caused the Indonesian government to eradicate all its coffee trees and plant tea in their place.
In 2005 coffee trees were gradually planted again in Java and in 2008 Dadang and Eko created the Klasik Bean cooperative with the intention of educating and caring for the coffee farmers and the environment in order to obtain the best quality and yield of cherries.
In the beginning they collaborated with only 7 farms in West Java. Today there are more than 1,300 farms on different islands of the Archipelago where through their “shelters” they instruct, guide, support, process, research and improve the production of coffee to all small farmers in the area. If they used to sell their cherries for $0.05/kg, now they are worth $0.67/kg.
At Kopi Florist I was expected by the hospitable team of Klasik Beans; Don Yadi (co-founder), Dadang (founder), Darus (barista), Deni (agronomist), Mpep (driver), Nofel (barista), Joseph (collaborator) and Aby, who is doing a work of integration between coffee growers, environment, processing stations and customers and who has guided me and explained me exhaustively all their work. Such is the humility, joy and passion of this team that as soon as I arrived I felt like I was part of a family. The sense of humor, responsiveness and seriousness in the work is undoubtedly one of the main pillars of Klasik Beans.
With Don Yadi at Kopi Florist, Bandung.
I was able to test it:
Tolu Batak. Giling basah – Lintong (Sumatra)
Notes of tobacco leaf, vegetable, clove, sweet, with lots of character.
Geisha Sunda. Washing (North Bandung – Java)
Notes of black tea, kumquat, flowers and fresh grass.
Nusajawi. Typica, catimor and linies, (South Bandung – Java)
Sweet notes of pollen, spices, tobacco, black pepper and cardamom.
Gulupao. Red and yellow bourbon (Komodo)
Notes of hot chocolate, vanilla, ginger and clove, smooth and clean.
Dewi Rengganis. Semi-wash, ancient typica (Gunung Puntang – South Bandung)
Soft notes of orange peel, dried fruits, caramel, honeyed.
Tasting coffees at Kopi Florist
With the new tea plantations after 1987, Indonesians started to drink more and more of this drink and at Kopi Florist I was served one of their types of green tea, dried as it is made in China. It was divine!
Javanese green tea at Kopi Florist.
Java Sunda Radiophare by Magnifico.
Curiosity: Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) has a verb for “to drink coffee”, “Ngopi”. Thus, the phrase “Ongap Angop Ngopio” means: If you are yawning you should drink coffee.
“If you’re yawning you should drink coffee.”
Part of the great Klasik Beans team, from left to right; Mpep, Aby, Don Yadi, Nofel, Joseph, below Anes, myself and Darus.
GUNUNG PUNTANG SHELTER
From there we went to the Gunung Puntang refuge, one hour south of Bandung. Klasik Beans calls the refuge its reception, training, processing, laboratory, roasting, etc. centers. There I met another key person of their team, Inmas, responsible for quality control, roasting and tasting.
The Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, unlike the big agribusiness farmers, wanted to preserve one of the last remaining forests in Java so, together with the local trekking community, they came up with the idea of planting coffee trees in the forest. The coffee trees would enjoy the shade of the trees, provide income for the local people and keep the forest intact. Thus was born the Klasik Beans coffee project in Gunung Puntang.
This means that the land is owned by the state and Klasik Beans collaborates with the government by educating farmers to increase and control the quality of their coffees and to maintain local biodiversity. As a result, the farms are very well cared for and the farmers are thriving.
Gunung Puntang collaborates with coffee farmers neighboring the refuge in an area covering 160ha. Although the refuge was built in 2013, training and planting in the area began in 2009. Prior to 2013, the Puntang trekking community lodge served as a shelter for local educators and farmers and the Pacet lodge (larger and older) was used as a processing station for coffee harvested in Puntang.
Gungung Puntang Coffee Shelter.
Inmas preparing coffees in the morning.
Breakfast at Gunung Puntang
Aby explaining the 29 ‘rules’ or ‘essence’ of Klasik Beans.
Klasik Beans has been following its 29 commandments since 2011, among which are:
They should always remain small
They should try to support the progress of as many people as possible by helping and sharing their experiences.
No corruption
Conservation
Ethics
Lucro
…
The 29th is to believe in God and trust so that you have a peaceful spirit.
If you don’t trust you will end up with an empty spirit and will not be able to share high principles.
The next morning, after having a delicious breakfast of coffee and fruit, we started to walk around the refuge where the coffee plantations are located. If you don’t pay attention you don’t realize that after the first 50m of forest you are already in the ‘fincas’. The coffee trees are so integrated into the local landscape, so incorporated into the forest that they look more like wild coffee trees that grew spontaneously in the middle of the native landscape.
We are accompanied by Dadang who explains in minute detail the whole procedure of planting, pruning, fertilization, harvesting, varietals… Dadang started working in coffee in 2010; before he only participated in the community as a hiker but confesses that he spent most of the time doing nothing, he had no income and did not feel useful except when he had one or another rescue to do in the mountains. Today he is a true master of the art of growing and processing coffees, he has been and is the main link between hikers and klasik beans, he is busy and passionate about his work, he has a decent salary and feels very fulfilled. If you ask him what has changed in his life after the coffee his face expresses something between laughter and tears and after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence he answers; “everything”.
Through the coffee plantations around the Gunung Puntang refuge.
Dadang and Aby in the greenhouse.
For each coffee tree there are 3 local endemic trees that provide shade. Klasik Beans has created a reforestation program of the forests with 11 native species. A large part of the native species was eliminated by the Dutch for the forced planting of pine trees in the last century. These pines, from which they obtained their resin (at high prices) are everywhere and are now part of the ‘natural’ landscape. Although they provide surplus to the coffee trees, the pines acidify the soil and force the producers to use fertilizers (always natural) harvest after harvest. The cultivation of vegetables with pesticides before the coffee trees is also responsible for the current weakness of the soil. This is not the case in West Sumatra (Gayo) for example, where nature is still intact.
The fertilizer they use is made by themselves and is composed of leftover pulp, banana tree leaves and leaves from other forest plants. They cover it and let it ferment for 5 or 6 months and once it is dry, they add animal manure, bag it and store it for a year. It is a slow process but it ensures high quality fertilizer with their own resources and without harming the environment.
The most critical moments for fertilization are the two months before harvest when the cherries are changing from green to red, which is when small but important quantities are added, and then after harvest, already in abundance so that the coffee tree does not flower immediately. The older a coffee tree is, the more fertilizer it consumes; a one year old tree consumes 0.5 kg of fertilizer in its annual cycle, while a 5 year old tree consumes 5 kg.
Fertilizer preparation and storage station
Part of the forest taken over by pine trees
Obtaining resin from pine trees in the forests
Sunda Hejo, one of the local species recovered by the Klasik Beans reforestation program
Ancient Typica, or Typica Antigo, is one of the varietals they believe they are growing. They are wild coffee plants salvaged from Flores and other Indonesian islands after they had to cut everything down in 1987 in Java. Sometimes they don’t know what variety they are harvesting and send them to labs in Europe but unfortunately there is still no one who knows how to give them an answer.
SUNDA RADIOPHARE
A few kilometers from the lodge we find the ruins of the radio station that gives its name to the very sweet Java Sunda Radiophare.
Sunda or Sondanese (Sondanese: Urang Sunda – Sunda Man) are an ethnic group native to the western part of the island of Java. They number approximately 40 million, and are the second most numerous of all ethnic nations. The name Sunda derives from the Sanskrit prefix su- meaning “goodness” or “possessing good quality”. The term Sunda also means bright, light, purity, cleanliness and white.
Radiophare was the name of the local radio station built by the Dutch in 1917 during the colonial era. They used it to call home and it also functioned as a social club near their summer homes in the cool mountains of Puntang. In 1945, when Indonesia finally gained independence from the Netherlands, the people of Sundan destroyed the station fearing the return of the Dutch. Today all that remains of that complex
Today all that remains of that complex are its ruins overgrown by tropical vegetation and there are no plans to rebuild the station as it symbolizes the colony and the days of domination over the sovereignty of the Sondanese.
The Radiophare in operation (1920).
What remains of the Radiophare as of today (2017), mostly part of the front font is visible.
The very short history of VOC in Indonesia
Before the arrival of the Europeans, Indonesia was ruled by small Islamic kingdoms with the exception of the island of Bali which remains to this day mainly Hindu.
The Dutch arrived in Indonesia in the 17th century and until 1800 the VOC (Dutch East India Company), the first multinational corporation in the world, bought copious quantities of spices and rubber from the archipelago and established the capitalist system. Possessing powers approaching those of a government and with the dissolution and bankruptcy of the VOC, most of its Indonesian holdings became Dutch territory, with Java being the base of its colony.
Among other barbarities, during WWI the VOC sold the Sardinians and other Indonesian ethnic groups as slaves to Suriname and established a system of forced cultivation on the islands for its own benefit, where peasants were forced to work on government plantations for 60 years.
Days after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, an episode that marks the end of WWII, Indonesia declares its independence granted by the Dutch East Indies on the condition that they inherit their astronomical debts to third parties. However, it was not until five years later, in August 1950, that the Netherlands formally recognized the independence of the Archipelago and aborted its recolonization missions.
THE BENEFIT
The Gunung Puntang mill has the capacity to process 1 to 2 tons of cherries per day, but Klasik Bean has other shelters such as the one in Garut which has a capacity of 30 tons per day.
Back to the shelter we set out to benefit. Gunung Puntang buys the cherries from local producers who have been trained by Klasik Beans. They queue up and deliver their cherries to the first tank for rinsing and separation of floating beans (green, overripe or defective). Each farmer is paid an extra premium for delivering only ripe cherries.
Separation stage of the floating grains.
Removing water from the tank.
Water from the tanks is directed to 5 natural ponds with native plants for filtration. When the organic matter sinks to the bottom of the pond it is removed and added to the compost.
Ready to be pulped.
Mechanical pulping process.
In Gunung Puntang it is processed:
HONEY: after pulping, the beans with their mucilage go directly to the greenhouse for drying. No prior fermentation.
GABAH KERING o SEMI-LAVADO: After pulping, the baskets with the mucilage-covered kernels are covered with plastic where they undergo a 12-hour dry fermentation. They are then washed to remove the mucilage and taken to the greenhouse to dry.
LAVADO: After the 12 hours of dry fermentation of the previous process, the grains undergo another 5 hours of fermentation in water tanks, then they are washed and dried in greenhouses.
GILING BASAH: the process of “wet hulling” goes through the same process of semi-washing until, in its drying process, it reaches 30%-40% humidity (this usually takes only one day) and then it is hulled (its parchment is removed). It is then dried again until it reaches its ideal 12% humidity. It is essential that this last stage be slow to ensure that no mold grows on the beans, which are vulnerable without their protective coating; this usually takes about 10 days.
The pulped grains fall into the basket.
Dry fermentation for 12 hours.
Placed to dry in elevated parihuelas and protected from the rain.
All their coffees are dried in greenhouses as it rains almost every day in the afternoon.
If the greenhouse is full its doors are left open to ensure air flow and allow the water content to evaporate.
Of the 100kg we processed that afternoon, only 15kg of green coffee was obtained!
TASTING
While Aby, Dadang, Joseph and Nofel guided me between plantations and greenhouses, Inmas roasted and prepared 12 origins of wonderful Indonesians. Among others, we tasted: Bali, Sulawesi, Flores, Java, Sumatra, natural, washed, semi-washed, giling basah, honeys…
The 12 tasted origins of Klasik Beans.
Discovering the best of Indonesia.
Tasting with Inmas, Aby and Nofel.
El Magnifico at the tasting table.
These 12 coffees have been a journey between clove and cardamom, chocolate and peanuts, perfumes of fine wood resins, tobacco leaves, citrus peel and flowers, wet earth and licorice, tamarind, jams, caramels and chamomiles, massala chais and cereals, dense and creamy bodies, fresh and persistent aftertaste, sexy and elegant, with character and complexity. An orgy for the senses!
TOYA BUNGKAH
As if everything I met between Bandung and Gunung Puntang was not enough, I went to check another small Klasik Beans refuge in northeast Bali, Toya Bungkah.
Between Java and Bali, a vulcano peeks through the clouds.
Located at the foot of the lake and the Batur volcano at 1,100 meters above sea level, Toya Bungkah is the ‘garden’ of the idyllic Black Lava Hostel. Yon, owner of both the hostel and the lodge, is one of the friendliest hosts you will meet along the way.
He greets me at dusk in his hot spring pool with the following phrase tattooed on his arm: “Lakukan hal-hal kecil dengan tulus”.
I ask him what it means and he answers: “Do the little things sincerely”, the slogan of Klasik Beans.
After much talk and little sleep at 3am we are awake ready to climb the slopes of Batur. After the majestic spectacle of the sunrise, we walk down the volcano past several families of monkeys until we reach the coffee plantations.
The view of Gunung (mountain) Abang and Danau (lake) Batur from Gunung Batur.
The preserved environment teeming with biodiversity; monkeys and various species coexist in the area.
At 1,717 meters above sea level, the Batur volcano has ideal conditions for the cultivation of coffee in the surrounding area.
Being quite small in size, the Toya Bungkah refuge separates all their cherries manually. They do not have float separation tanks as in Puntang and all their beans are processed by the Gabah Kering method; semi-washed with 12 hours of dry fermentation.
It is then dried in raised parihuelas inside the greenhouses for one day and then put to dry in patios for another 8 days, always under cover as it can rain almost every day in the area.
When the parchment coffee is dry, it is taken to Bandung for hulling, packaging, final quality control and sale.
Greenhouses for coffee drying.
Coffee trees intermingle with other shrubs in the garden of the Black Lava Hostel. In the background is the dining room of the lodge.
Many of its coffee trees are shaded by mandarins and, coincidentally or not, the tasting note of the Toya Bungkah has a lot of mandarin in it as well.
Toya Bungkah: vegetal, mushroom, umami, sweet, herbal and citrus notes such as mandarin.
Testing coffees in the laboratory
Eternally grateful for the warm and professional reception by the entire Klasik Beans team and for their wonderful cafes and places. To Belco, and personally to Angel Barrera, for making this unforgettable experience possible. We will see you again for sure!
Terima kasih banyak!