molasses, palm sugar, foresty notes, tobacco, and chocolate bar bittersweetness.
Giling Basah (Wet Hulling)
In the Bahasa language of Indonesia, Giling Basah means “wet-hulled.” Giling Basah refers to a coffee process that is specific to Indonesia and creates a signature flavor. Wet-hulled coffees can have more body and lower acidity, but they also fall short of the sweetness and aroma uncovered by other methods. In the traditional wet-process method, the fresh coffee fruit has its skin removed (pulped) and it is left in concrete tanks to ferment overnight. In much of Indonesia it is small-holder farmers who carry out the first steps of the process. Farmers pick the coffee and pulp it, which means that they run it through a hand-crank drum with a surface like a cheese grater that peels off the skin of the fruit. After overnight fermentation, the mucilage can be washed off and you then have wet parchment coffee. So they take their clean wet parchment coffee, dry it a few hours until it has 50% moisture content, and sell it to a collector middleman at a local coffee market. They get paid faster and do less work this way. The mill send it to a special machine (the wet-huller) when the coffee still has 25-35% moisture content. This machine uses a lot of friction to take the tightly attached parchment layer and tear it from the water swollen green bean. After hulling the coffee is laid out to dry. Drying without the shell is rapid, so the mill is able to sell the coffee and get paid quickly.
About the Farm
Pak Gunawan’s has really stretched out his entrepreneurial roots. From coffee roaster and cafe owner, to pine oil distiller (most coffee is grown in the pine agroforestry zones, so this makes a lot of sense), this Sundanese small-businessman recently added “coffee collector” to his repertoire. “Collectors” are intermediaries of sorts who buy partially processed coffee and full coffee cherry from coffee small scale farmers and then process the coffee down to the dried seed/bean.
In the case of Pak Gunawan, he is renting a small warehouse space replete with coffee huller in Ciwidey and producing mostly wet-hulled coffee. Whereas many collectors create large blends of all the coffee they buy, Pak Gunawan pays special attention to separating the lots that he buys by region, these smaller lot sizes adding a layer of quality control, not to mention more specific provenance. This lot is from Tambak Ruyung, quite close to his warehouse operation in Ciwidey. Elevation is roughly 1200 to 1700 meters above sea level.
Taste Notes
Tambak Ruyung expresses so much of what we love in a quality wet hulled coffee, like rustic sweetness, herbaceous and fruited accent notes, foresty aroma, and extensive bittersweetness in the dark roasts. At medium roasts have a layer of cacao-like bittering and molasses in tje smells that helps keep some of the interesting outliers like pine oil, bran muffin, and even a pineapple hint, close to the ground. The cup shows a hybrid of flavors with the bright aspects of higher grown Java coffee coupled with some of the rustic elements of a nice wet-hulled Sumatra. The sweetness has notes of blackstrap molasses and palm sugar, accented by foresty flavors, a bit of tobacco, and chocolate bar bittersweetness.
- Origin: Indonesia
- Region: Java, Tambak Ruyung, Ciwidey
- Producer: Pak Gunawan
- Altitude: 1200-1700m
- Cultivar: Ateng, Typica
- Grade: Grade 1
- Processing: Wet Hulled (Giling Basah)