Sumatra Coffee Beans

Sumatra is one of the most geographically distinctive coffee-producing islands in the world. Coffee is grown across several regions, with Aceh in the north, the Gayo Highlands, and the areas around Lake Toba and Mandheling in the south the most significant for specialty production. There are very few large estates: instead, smallholder farmers, many working plots of three hectares or fewer, bring their coffee to local collection points where it is aggregated, traded, and processed. This decentralised structure makes traceability difficult but also preserves a diversity of smallholder genetics and farming practices that would be lost on large managed estates.

What defines Sumatran coffee above all else is the wet-hulling process, known locally as Giling Basah. Coffee is hulled at a higher than usual moisture content, producing a bean with a distinctive blue-green colour and a cup profile unlike almost anywhere else: heavy body, low acidity, and earthy, herbal, spiced complexity with occasional notes of dark chocolate and cedar. When grown at altitude in the Gayo Highlands and processed with care, Sumatran coffees can also show surprising cleanliness and depth alongside that characteristic weight. Any lots we are roasting will appear below.

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