Source Analysis by Chris Kornman & Evan Gilman
The village this coffee comes from is the source of many stories in the Gayo region, as it was the original home of one of the founding members of the Free Aceh Movement, or Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, a group fighting for independence from 1976 until 2005. These 28 years left an indelible mark on the place as a center of trouble and conflict, and even after the negotiations that resulted in peace and reconciliation, many people in the coffee industry avoided doing business with this area due to its reputation.
Adena Coffee set out to rehabilitate the reputation of this area through outreach and coffee industry. Through their work, they were able to bring in higher profits for coffee producers, invest in coffee production infrastructure, and revitalize the area into its current lively market status.
Following the devastating landslides and floods of late 2025, this area required an immense amount of repairs, especially as the main road from Takengon to the coffee production area of Jagong Jeget to the south was completely cut off. Further, some of Adena’s facilities were damaged in one of the areas largest landslides. Fortunately, they were able to get support from the community, and also from employees of Royal Coffee, who were able to donate directly to the cause of rebuilding the area.
What’s more, one of Adena’s producing partners in the area recently achieved #9 placement at the 2026 Indonesia Cup of Excellence. Even now, Kenawat is the site of revitalization and building new stories for a formerly maligned village.
Offered to us under the moniker of "Ragi" coffee, my general unfamiliarity with Indonesian food left me blissfully ignorant of exactly what measures had been undertaken by our producing and supply partner, Adena coffee, to create this special lot. In truth, we selected the coffee for Crown Jewel status because of its flavors: unique, a little wild and fruity, echoing both the sweet grassiness of fermented foods and tropical-fruit sweetness of pineapples, papayas, and coconuts.
Tapai, or tape, is fermented food, typically rice, found throughout southeast Asian cuisine. The word is derived from an ancient word that simply means "fermented" and can refer to both the fermented paste and the alcoholic byproduct. As you might imagine with spontaneously fermented foods (much like with coffee the world over), the culture is often a mix of locally occurring microbes, mostly yeasts. However, "Ragi Tape" is the name of a starter which is used to begin the fermentation process, and could be either commercially available yeast(s), home-cultivated cultures (like a kombucha scoby) or some combination thereof.
In the case of this coffee, Adena coffee used a commercial Ragi Tape, a starter culture of a known yeast strain, and a relatively common (albeit ancient) one—Saccharomyces cerevisiae—known as baker's, brewer's or ale yeast. That starter culture helped inoculate the coffee during its fermentation. With the name "Ragi," Adena have successfully married the geographically unspecific concept of controlled fermentation in coffee with a highly local and familiar product.
The coffee selected for the Ragi treatment was cultivated by just six small farmers in Kampung Kenawat, not far from Lake Tawar and Takengon in the Aceh province. Around 70% of the coffee farmers in the village are women, many of whom rely at least in part of the income from their harvest to support their families. Farmers are growing a mix of local arabica, including resistant hybrids like Tim-Tim (aka the Timor Hybrid) as well as direct lineage trees like Abysinnia (aka AB3, or Java).
Adena coffee is the bridge from smallholder farmers to export, providing both financing, processing at their new mill in Kenewat, and export services—a one stop shop. The coffee cherries delivered and sold to Adena are depulped and fermented in a dry anaerobic environment with the Ragi yeast for three days, before washing and finally drying in parchment fully.
