Indonesia – Pegasing washed

PRODUCER

Hendra and his family’s farm and processing station is an island of experimental processing in a sea of conventional washed coffee typical of the Pegasing area. Hendra’s father, Hamdan, moved to the area in 2006, bought land, and started growing coffee. His son Hendra soon became enthusiastic about coffee. He began experimenting with processing methods, studying literature, and seeking advice from other Indonesian farmers who had moved away from the traditional washed method. The family invested heavily in the farm, especially in equipment for different types of processing: a small wet mill with two pulpers, gravity washing channels, and several elevated presses in large poly tunnels for drying the coffee. They also established a nursery for the Abyssinia variety, the first variety planted when coffee entered the Indonesian market.

PROCESSING

Hendra processes coffee in up to ten different ways and never stops experimenting. How coffee is processed determines the weather and the client’s demand: Hendra sells most of his crop to roasters directly in Indonesia, especially in Jakarta. His processing station produces up to 40 tonnes of coffee a year, which he buys from 70 farmers in the area. Hendra motivates them to sell by rewarding them for a good harvest, a travel bonus if the farmer is from far away, and a premium for growing micro lots. The washed coffee is pulped and floated in the channels before being fermented in a concrete tank for 12- 18 hours. It is then left to dry on the raised beds for between 8 – 14 days, weather-dependent. Before being placed into bags, the coffee is put through a density table twice to help remove immature beans and then goes through two rounds of hand-picking to ensure it is clean and of specialty standard.

VARIETY

Tim Tim is the Indonesian name for the variety known as Hybrido de Timor. It is a natural cross between Robusta and Arabica, discovered on a farm on the island of Timor in 1917. The variety is now widely cultivated around the world because of its disease resistance and is used as the genetic basis for projects developing resistant hybrid coffee varieties. Gayo 1 is a variety the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture officially introduced in 2010 as disease resistant. It is not entirely clear what the basis of the variety is, but its genetics suggest that it may also be a descendant of Hybrido de Timor.