Sumatra Aceh Tengah
Denim Coffee
Milling Process: Wet Hulled
Drying Process: Sun Dried
Harvest: June-December
About Sumatra Aceh Tengah:
Before the 1970s, coffees in Sumatra were processed in the two most commonly found methods worldwide: washed and natural. In the 1970s, Japanese interest in Sumatran coffees led to the introduction of the Wet-Hulled process, a unique style of handling and drying that is largely responsible for Sumatran coffees’ unmistakable flavor characteristics, but also their normally greenish-blue hue.
In Sumatra, coffee farmers will typically harvest their coffee cherry and depulp it by hand at their farm or home, allow it to dry for a very short time, then bring it either to a coffee marketplace or directly to a “collector,” or collection point, where the beans are purchased at anywhere from 30–50% moisture, with their mucilage still partially intact. The coffee is then combined and hulled (has its parchment removed) while it is still in this high-moisture state. The coffee is then dried to the more commonly globally accepted 11–13% moisture in order to prepare for export.