LCC Roastery

Complex earth tones and intense bittersweetness of high % cacao bar and bakers chocolate, accents of rustic palm sugar, peat-like scotch note, tobacco, leathery sweetness, aromatic cedar, and an orange oil hint.

Lintong Nihota is the town that has become synonymous with the entire southern part of Lake Toba area, and most of the coffee from the southern shores are sold as such. Lake Toba defines the landscape of the area, the largest volcanic crater lake in the world, and the result of the largest volcanic event on earth in the last 25 million years! It is huge, and the coffees from the north and eastern shores are quite different from the Lintong coffees.

This lot is from one coffee collector known tersely as Joner. Sweet Maria’s met him several times and his dry mill was one of the larger and more professional (and cleaner) operations in the area. In a system where farmers sell to local collector, much rides on the long-standing relationships between the two parties, and the collector is really the key person to determine coffee quality. A good collector buys coffees direct, as Joner does, rather than in the local village coffee markets where quality is low, the wet processing of the coffees is haphazard, and everything gets mixed together.

This coffee is a special preparation: It is prepared by density at Joner’s mills, then it is density sorted once again and hand-sorted in Medan once again before export. The screen size is 17 1/64ths and up, the largest bean size offered, and tends to command a higher price. Though not necessarily a correlate to quality, we were really impressed with this large bean separation. The Sumatra harvest was relatively small, which means coffee is more expensive, but also there’s just a lot less high quality coffee available. This made tasting the sample from Joner all the more sweet and buying decision a no-brainer!

• Origin: Sumatra, Indonesia
• Region: Lintong, Nihota
• Producer: Pak Joner
• Altitude: 1400-1500m
• Cultivar: Ateng, Bergendal, TimTim
• Grade: Grade 1
• Processing: Wet Hulled (Giling Basah)
• Sourcing: Sweet Maria’s