BeanScene Magazine

After 11 years of success working with Sumatra’s Blue Batak beans, hard work and a diligent approach to quality had reaped it’s rewards.

It was time to look for something new, time to search for a bean that could match the attractive flavours of our Sumatran favourite – time to conquer something new. It took us a couple of years to read, study, and listen to the coffee gossips from the city of Bandung before we decided to look into the infant coffee area of the Sunda region. We weren’t sure if it was entirely coincidental that my very close Indonesian friends were Sundanese, and today I often wonder why I hadn’t looked into this region any sooner.

Around three years ago my colleague, Eko and I made our first field trip to Sunda. Eko is a talented Indonesian, half Sundanese, great at developing new coffee ideas and also a self-trained architect. He was addicted to both coffee and photography; and I called him a politician as he always knew how to get past red tape when dealing with Indonesian bureaucrats.

We took the bus from Jakarta to Bandung, a pleasant three-hour ride. Our contact in Bandung, Deni, had little connection to coffee other than drinking a cup or two a day. He would be our first guide into the vast southern parts of Sunda and he knew the area very well as a volunteer with the National Disaster Rescue Team.

It took us seven days to explore the southern parts of Sunda, moving from Cisanti towards Ciwidey and passing by the major coffee growing area of Pangalengan. The roads were extremely rough and I could feel it in my back, riding in Deni’s 36-year-old Jeep. It was a remarkable change from the smooth Sumatra travels I had taken in the past 11 years. We camped in Cisanti at Pak Kusnadi’s single-storey, wooden house next to the forest. The house had been heavily damaged by a recent earthquake. We slept on the floor, with nothing but a mattress and a single thick blanket to protect against the cold nights.

The first thing that struck me was the warm character of Sundanese people. I lived in Sumatra for 11 years and I thought I knew Indonesia well – but I was wrong.  Indonesia is widely diversified in everything from language to food, and millions of other aspects of daily life. Here I was dealing with people who constantly smile, never get angry, and are just so unbelievably friendly. The landscape of the Sunda region was made of mountains all around, and each piece of land was rigidly utilised. Wherever I looked, there were small plots of rice and vegetable terraces. Every day, except for Friday as it was a prayer day, the Sundanese farmers work hard making sure that growing plots are well-maintained. This was all a good sign for us, as I always thought that good people and nature made the best coffee beans. 

After seven days of Sunda exploration, I felt like we were entering into an entirely new coffee chapter – it was like having a new coffee dream. Everything was so different. Sunda coffee history dates back to the 18th Century when Dutch traders introduced coffee cultivation. In 1880, the volcanic eruption at Gunung Guntur in the Garut area destroyed many plantations. This, combined with the leaf rust disease that swept through the region, led to the complete extinction of the coffee crops.

In the mid-1990s, coffee made a comeback in the Sundanese region in quite an unusual way. As land was scarce, the Sundanese farmers started entering forests, planting various vegetables. This led to soil erosion and also intensified illegal logging and forest fires. As the forested land belongs to the Government of Indonesia, the Forestry Department came up with the initiative to allow farmers to use public forests to plant coffee instead of vegetables.

The initiative spread quickly and benefitted both the farmers and the natural environment. As the coffee tree is a long-term cultivation agent, it enabled soil conservation and stopped illegal logging. The Sunda coffee cherry served as a cash crop for farmers to bring in extra income. But not all was rosy for the farmers. Coffee plantations were often located in remote areas that were only accessible by foot. It took a lot of hard work to bring the cherries down to the villages. As the market for this new commodity was relatively underdeveloped, it was difficult for the farmers to earn good money. Also, the Sunda coffee didn’t get a fair treatment – it was often used as a substitute for Sumatra or Bali coffees as it lacked an identity.

We saw this predicament as an opportunity to contribute our coffee knowledge to the community. We started looking at Sunda coffee as a new discovery and were determined to introduce it to the specialty coffee world.

In early 2010, we set up our small mill in Panuwan. It’s roughly a two-hour drive south from Bandung. We looked at possible locations and it finding a suitable one proved challenging. As we drove to the area, we got lost and drove twice around Panauwan – a sure sign that this was destiny.

Eko quickly built a small warehouse, residence and kitchen and I contributed some greenhouses and drying tables. We made everything from big bamboo plants. Believe it or not, we were finished in less than two months. Eko was a star and I’m sure I would not have done it without him and his great talent for making things happen. I quickly imported a couple of Colombian Penagos pulpers and a small home roaster for our simple quality lab.

By April we were ready to start our Sundanese coffee adventure, with a great team of passionate people ready for the challenge. Budi, Didu, Deni, Lasman, and couple young Indonesian guys, started ‘learning by doing’, working on Sunda coffee. I told them they were allowed to make mistakes – but, they were not allowed to repeat them.

The first Sunda coffee season was tough. It was not easy to be new in the area. The big task was to let farmers know we were a credible small business wanting to help them market their coffee. We contacted village and farm group leaders, and gave a couple of presentations on the agricultural characteristics of coffee trees.

We tried to build trust. We had agronomic expertise and that helped us to entice those coffee farmers. Slowly, our Panauwan team started to get busy with cherries. Finally, the day came and we started buying our first few bags. News about us quickly spread and soon farmers were showing up almost daily. We figured out that we needed to pay a premium price in order to secure the best ripe cherries. At the pick of the season, we were receiving around 1400 kilograms of cherries on a daily basis. Every evening after final selection, we pulped them and placed the sticky, full of muselage parchment into bamboo baskets for overnight fermentation. Depending on the night temperature we had to either shorten or extend the fermentation process. The following morning the parchment was ready for washing and was put on drying tables to start the labourious sun drying process.

It was not easy. The weather was not supporting our efforts as it was a year of excessive rains. Luckily we had our green houses on top of the drying tables and the GrainPro Collapsible Dryer Cases helped tremendously. On average, it took us around 11 days to dry the parchment to 11 per cent moisture level. We were just realising how much work we were faced with to produce a container of green coffee. But it was not about volume – it was about quality, it was about Sunda.

We’ve made incredible progress based on what we learned in that first year of operation. We mastered the processing side and spent more time on networking, and encouraging Sunda coffee development in various villages. We are proud to say that with our know-how and agronomy contribution, we made many new friends among the Sunda farmers. Seedling development was a big part of this year’s work.

I must say, today, Deni is a coffee guy that I am extremely proud of. He led the entire project with such an intense coffee passion that after three years local Sunda farmers have started believing in themselves and seeing a future for their unique Sunda Hejo beans.