Single Origin Spotlight: Sumatra Ketiara

Some coffees are bright and delicate. Sumatra Ketiara is not one of them. It’s deep, earthy and full-bodied, with dark chocolate up front and a soft plum finish. When the weather turns cold, it’s the cup we reach for first.

That flavor comes from a specific place, a specific group of people and a processing method found almost nowhere else in the coffee world. Here’s the story behind the bag.

The Gayo Highlands

Ketiara grows in the Gayo Highlands of Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra in Indonesia. Coffee has been grown here since it arrived in 1908, and today the region is known as one of the best sources of arabica in the country.

The farms sit high in the mountains, where altitude, humidity and lower light slow down how quickly the coffee cherries ripen. Many farmers here still grow on unirrigated land using organic fertilizer.

The region’s coffee is distinctive enough that Gayo Arabica became the first Indonesian product to earn Protected Geographical Indication status in the European Union, the same kind of protection given to Champagne or Parmigiano Reggiano. Only coffee actually grown in Gayo can carry the name.

The Co-op: Koperasi Ketiara

Our Sumatra comes from Koperasi Ketiara, a cooperative founded in 2009 by Ibu Rahmah and 37 other coffee traders and farmers.

Rahmah grew up around coffee. “From a young age, I observed the processes of planting, caring for, harvesting and processing coffee,” she has said. She started out as a small trader, buying coffee cherries from farmers and reselling them to larger traders. The farmers she worked with wanted a cooperative that could push for better pay and fairer treatment, so she helped build one. She was later elected chairwoman.

What started with 38 members has grown to nearly 2,000 farmers. Roughly 40% of the members are women, rare in a region where coffee trading has long been dominated by men. Rahmah herself is one of the only women coffee traders in Central Aceh.

“I want all women in Central Aceh to be independent, equal with men,” she has said. The co-op even runs a line called Queen Ketiara, grown entirely by women.

Under her leadership, Ketiara pursued Fair Trade certification so farmers could earn premium prices. Members voted to invest those premiums in healthcare, education, infrastructure and long-term farm improvements. The co-op also exports directly, without a middleman, so more of the money stays with the farmers.

Wet-Hulling: Why Sumatra Tastes Like Sumatra

If you’ve ever wondered why Sumatra coffee tastes so different from coffee grown in Central America or Africa, the answer is mostly one word: wet-hulling. In Indonesia it’s called giling basah.

Every coffee bean starts inside a cherry, wrapped in a thin papery layer called parchment. With most coffees, farmers dry the beans slowly, often for weeks, until they’re down to about 11 to 12% moisture. Only then do they remove the parchment.

Wet-hulling flips that order:

1. Farmers pulp the cherries to remove the fruit.

2. They dry the beans only partway, to about 35 to 40% moisture.

3. The parchment is stripped off while the bean is still wet and soft.

4. The bare beans are then dried the rest of the way, down to about 11 to 12% moisture, before export.

Why do it this way? Climate. Sumatra is humid and gets frequent rain, which makes the long, slow drying that other coffees need very difficult. Hulling early cuts drying time dramatically, and it frees up farmers’ limited drying space faster.

What it does to the flavor. Removing the parchment while the bean is soft changes the bean’s structure and how it develops flavor. You can even see it: wet-hulled beans have a distinctive dark, blue-green color. Compared with a washed coffee:

• Acidity: washed coffees are bright and lively. Wet-hulled coffees are very low in acidity.

• Body: washed coffees are light to medium. Wet-hulled coffees are heavy, almost syrupy.

• Flavor: washed coffees lean floral and tea-like. Wet-hulled coffees lean earthy, with dark chocolate, cedar, spice and herbal notes.

That’s exactly what you taste in Ketiara: the heavy body and deep, earthy, dark chocolate character come straight from the process. It’s what farmers developed to work with their climate, and it ended up producing one of the most recognizable flavor profiles in coffee.

How We Roast It

We take Ketiara to a medium dark roast here at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Dark enough to bring out the chocolate and body, but not so dark that you lose the plum sweetness underneath.

How to Brew It

Because it’s low in acidity and big on body, Ketiara shines in brew methods that highlight richness:

• French press: the fullest, richest version of this coffee

• Drip: an easy everyday cup with plenty of depth

• With milk: the chocolate holds up beautifully in a latte or with a splash of cream

Why Single Origins This Fall

A single origin tells you exactly where your coffee comes from: the region, the people and the choices that shaped the cup. Ketiara is a good place to start: one co-op, one region, one process, and a flavor you can’t get anywhere else.

Sources

• Fairtrade International, “Ibu Rahmah: Cultivating community through coffee”: https://www.fairtrade.net/us-en/why-fairtrade/impact/impact-stories/Ibu-Rahmah-coffee-impact.html

• Root Capital, “Ketiara: Advancing Women’s Inclusion in Indonesia”: https://rootcapital.org/story/ketiara-advancing-womens-inclusion-in-indonesia/

• Indonesia Investments, “Indonesia’s Gayo Arabica Coffee Awarded Protected Status by EU”: https://www.indonesia-investments.com/news/todays-headlines/indonesia-s-gayo-arabica-coffee-awarded-protected-status-by-eu/item7844

• Green Coffee Collective, “Wet Hulled Coffee: Indonesia’s Giling Basah Method”: https://greencoffeecollective.com/pages/glossary/wet-hulled-process

• Forum Coffee Co., “What Is Wet-Hulled Coffee? Sumatra’s Unique Process”: https://forumcoffeeco.com/blogs/coffee-journal/wet-hulled-coffee-sumatra-processing-explained