August 2012’s pick

Sumatra Aged Grade 1 Mandheling

The highest grade of Sumatra coffee, aged for three years and dark roasted for maximum richness and complexity.

This month’s selection marks Kopi’s first foray into the niche tradition of aged coffee. It’s a small niche, too – with more than three years required to age coffee properly, few producers are prepared to take the risk. But the rewards can be incredible: a rare, expensive coffee that challenges connoisseurs in a way few coffees can.

Our coffee experts’ personal verdicts

Jim, 35 years in the coffee trade
“The flavours of this month’s coffee offer a challenge but also a big reward for coffee lovers. For me this is where coffee gets close to wine and I would regard this coffee as akin to Port or Sherry, where high quality but relatively uninteresting grapes are carefully transformed over time into something unique and delicious.”

Geoff, 35 years in the coffee trade
“As there is very little fresh milk in the whole of Indonesia, they tend to whiten coffee with condensed milk. If you like your coffee sweet, give it a try and tell us what you think.”

Aged, but definitely not old

The aged coffee tradition began hundreds of years ago, when coffee travelled by sea, sometimes taking up to a year to get from producer to consumer. Tucked into the holds of great wooden ships, some coffees would age beautifully, developing a dark brown colour and a rich, complex flavour. This is where the name Old Brown Java comes from: the trip from Java was so long and the unroasted beans so aged by the time it arrived, importers got used to the colour and actually expected it.

Some of the beans wouldn’t age well, though they would have been sold anyway – so much for quality control in a pre-modern marketplace. In fact, a lot of the coffee that aged this way was probably undrinkable. But the good stuff was known and loved, and a niche market emerged.

Old-fashioned ageing, the modern way

As the coffee industry – and the technology behind it – evolved, producers began to take a more active role in the ageing process. The coffee you’re drinking has been aged in a controlled, tropical environment. Semi-washed, unroasted beans are gathered during the monsoon season and then for three years they are carefully stored, rotated and cupped. Yet even with the utmost care, there are huge risks: sometimes you can age a coffee perfectly and it just gets old. For producers, this loss can be devastating.

Not just any beans will do

The goal of the ageing process is to bring flavour out, not create a new flavour. For this reason, the best candidates for ageing are high in body and low in acidity. Acidity throws the process: even with flawless processing techniques, a highly acid coffee will fail to age and just grow old, expensive and tasteless.

Once the ageing process is complete, beans need a longer rest after roasting to fully even out and gain the best taste profile possible. Aged coffees typically taste best at a dark roast, which helps to accentuate the body.

Tasting notes

Aged coffees can be a bit of an acquired taste. Begin by smelling: see if you can smell leather and candied sugar in the dry aroma, and then an earthy, spicy raisin scent in the wet aroma. This is a result of the ageing process.

The first sip might come as a shock, so give your taste buds a minute to adapt to the extreme flavours: intense, deep, savoury, woody, syrupy, rustic. Can you taste a peppery initial hit, and then a rum-raisin finish? The flavor is incredibly complex, a Sumatra to the power of ten. And like anything this complex, it appeals to those extremes of the taste buds.

This is a dark roast, of course, and the intense, brooding weight of the roast pairs beautifully with the original flavours of the bean. If ever a coffee was made for espresso, aged Sumatra is it.

Man and child standing between coffee trees courtesy of Dutch East Tropenmuseum of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT). CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia creativecommons