Sumatra Sinabung Merga Silima GrainPro

Coffee Background

The Merga Silima tribe, scattered throughout the Karo plateau between two volcanoes (Sinabung and Sibayak), continues to maintain a traditional village lifestyle that includes houses that resemble boats. Here, nearly 160 producers cultivate and harvest coffee on farms that average less than 3 acres in size. Seventy-five percent of the producers are women who rely on coffee income to support their families. Each producer carefully sorts their harvested cherries before depulping and fermenting overnight with small micro-mills. 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.