Sourcing Details: With Indonesian coffees, half the battle is overcoming logistical challenges like rugged roads and unpredictable torrents of rain. Working with cooperatives that collaborate with farmers is a critical step to overcome these challenges and ensures that coffee safely makes it to the international market.
This particular lot comes from a longstanding relationship with a cooperative called Kopi Alam Kerinci (ALKO), which now has 516 members who cultivate on small family owned plots of land located around Mount Kerinci, the highest volcano in Indonesia. The cooperative works closely with producers to decrease forest encroachment.
Their farm management practices create a protective buffer for the Kerinci Seblat national park, which encircles the entire Kerinci valley with unparalleled natural beauty and habitat for the Sumatran Tiger.
The cooperative also has a program that exchanges roasted coffee for trash collected by hikers who visit the Kerinci Seblat national park. Processing Details: During the harvest, producers deliver their cherries to the cooperative’s central mill where they are carefully sorted before depulping and overnight fermenting.
Then the coffee is washed and laid out on patios to shed the excess water from the parchment covered beans.
Next the coffee takes a detour from the conventional path of processing in other origins, wherein, the coffee parchment is removed while the coffee still has a high moisture content.
This wet-hulling process, called Giling Basah in the Indonesian language, leaves the coffee bean exposed while drying on patios to a moisture percentage acceptable for export.
This Indonesian processing method gives the bean its unique bluish color and the hallmark Indonesian profile.
