I was in coffee areas of Sulawesi that I have not visited before, gaining some new insight on how coffee is traded and shuffled around Indonesia.
Sometimes it’s possible to learn more from the periphery than the center. With SulawesiSulawesi coffees are low-acid with great body and that deep, brooding cup profile akin to Sumatra. The coffee is sometimes known as Celebes, which was the Dutch colonial... ...more, this inversion is doubly true: It seems a lot of the coffee supposedly growing in the well known areas actually comes from those peripheral zones, unbeknownst to most buyers.
We traveled to the areas around Malino and Sinjai, my first time to this southeastern growing area which is sometimes traded under the name Malakaji after the market town. The name is unknown in the consumer market or even among coffee buyers.
But in fact coffee from this area is sold as many things; low grade commercial arabicaArabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the taxonomic species name of the genus responsible for around 75% of the worlds commercial coffee crop.: Arabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the... ...more, Toraja, Celebes, or basically any other coffee name in IndonesiaUSDA is (obviously) the United States Department of Agriculture. USDA also had coffee plant breeding programs in the past and one variety they distributed to Indonesia and was... ...more that brings in a premium price. SumatraIndonesians are available as a unique wet-hulled or dry-hulled (washed) coffees. Giling Basah is the name for the wet-hulling process in Bahasa language, and will have more body... ...moreMandhelingA trade name used for wet-hulled Sumatra coffees. It is an area and a culture group as well (spelled Mandailing often) but there is not as much coffee... ...more, BaliCoffee from the Indonesian island of Bali was formerly sold mainly to the Japanese market. Perhaps it is the changing face of world economics that finds the first... ...more, JavaThere are several types of Abyssinia variety coffee, but they are not from Ethiopia but rather Indonesia. Abyssinia 3 = AB3. PJS Cramer, a Dutch plant researcher, introduced this variety... ...more etc.
Much of the coffee here isn’t treated well, strip picked green, or as I hear, actually chemically ripened using a compound called, dreadfully, “carbide” (calcium carbide).
The sad thing is, the coffee in the area can be great! If picked ripe, dried well, processed with care, it’s wonderful coffee (which you have seen on our list as Sulawesi Topidi, for example). All this underscores the importance of how we already work here, direct with farmers and farmer groups.
Sulawesi 2023 – This trip is to areas I had not visited, and not the more popular coffee zones, and I learned a lot!We arrived in Makassar and headed to Malino area in the southwestern growing area. It’s a lush, green beautiful zone.Near Malino we visit Topidi village. This is the hopuse of Ilham, the first farmer we see.Daeng Balengkang is a leader in the area and has been farming coffee here for decades. Much of the coffee sold as Toraja or other Indonesian coffee has come from this area.The traditional rice farming in this area is well-known, producing a unique red rice valued around Indonesia. This farmer was just harvesting by hand, a rarity in itself.Clove is also an important crop in Sulawesi, and we see clove trees everywhere on the trip.They don’t get muhc production in Topidi village from their clove due to the wet conditions. The leaves, bark, every part of the tree has a wonderful clove scent.Coffee flowers in Topidi. While it wasn’t season for blooming, the lack of clear climate periods in Indonesia generally, and this southeast coffee zone, has been severely impacted by the India Ocean Dipole, a kind of El Nino.Not the model coffee drying here, this lot was ruined by lack of sun and humidity on the drying beds. Now it cannot go into specialty coffee so will be sold as commercial grade.On the coffee trees in Topidi you can see the moisture in the air creates a mossy growth.Drying house- the plastic that lines the drying house is covered with growth from the humidity – I liked this little graphic someone drew here.Greeting us on the road as we head out for a little wank to see the coffee trees, this funny guy. He always stayed about 20′ away but was quiet and seemed shy.There was a mist that moved in and we passed a field where the people who work in coffee were playing soccer – but you couldn’t see the goal, the fog was so thick! Here a river toward the coffee trees.Robusta coffee and arabica are grown in the same farms here, and around the village.Arabica in Topidi and other higher elevations on the two peaks in this area, Bala Karang and Bala Kaji, are usually “Line-S” or we find some Typica too.Returning to the village we had a chat with Pak Daeng, and some “coffee tubruk” that is, cowboy coffee where the grinds are put direct in the cup and hot water poured over. The locals smoked their clove cigarettes…Later that night, after dinner, we were joined by Yolan who brought a hand grinder and coffee samples for a small cupping ot the Topidi coffees. There was a great natural lot we tasted and we should have that later in the year when the Indo coffees ship. Home of Pak Halim, TopidiAfter dinner, the work continues sorting coffee at their small house next door. It seemed like the neighbor women were the main labor for this, and they explained it was convenient work, nearby, and they could fit it into their schedule around other things. It seemed late to be working though.Next visit the collowing day was in Sinjai district next to Malino, to see Haji Ilham. We stopped at a sort of demo farm for his coop Manipi farmer group, where he has each variety of coffee tagged and separated.When we arrived Haji Ilham was harvesting a small amount of coffee that was ripe. BTW Haji is an honorific one receives after they have been on the Haj to Mecca, has he did.These were beautiful trees with good harvest, but not his main project with his Manipi farmer group. We visited that later.On the way, a beautiful waterfall by the roadside. There is sertainly no water shortage in Malino or Sinjai.At the waterfall, ferny plants, just because they are so pretty I want to include them. I swear this kind of green feels like it heals your eyes looking at it in person!Rice is a huge crop in the flatter areas and valleys of this zone. Some is done with rice cultivators and machine tillers but largely it is hard hand work.As a reminder of the conditions, our walk to his other plot of coffee was difficult and wet: here, my son Ben’s footwear, which was a much better choice than mine!Haji Ilhams main farm area: He is planting a large amount of coffee, and has been granted land from the government to distribute to farmers for coffee use. It seems he’s very interested to get people to plant here, but maybe not a lot of takers, oddly.Ateng Super and Line-S are the two main varieties of coffee Haji Ilham is cultivating here, and offering free seedlings to any farmers who will come join his group.Across from Ilham house in Manipi, their space for warehouse and produce roasted coffee.The Manipi roaster is a curious thing. Basically the Indonesian government has been funding roasters made in Indonesia for coffee farmers who want to try to sell roasted coffee. They seem functional – they turn green beans brown!Manipi cat. At Haji Ilhams house we have a lunch and I take way too many photos of his super pretty cat.We will spend the rest of the day trying to get to Kahayya village where we will meet a farmer group that sent some very encouraging samples.On the way to find Kahayya town and farmer group, we get lost. But end up seeing some interesting farms with cacao, robusta and pepper vines! Pepper right from the vine is an amazing experience, which I had only enjoyed in India many years ago.We finally get on the right trach and meet Marsan in kahayya town. He is the head of the farmer group here. This is a beautiful small town in a sort of small valley.Houses in the town are in the form made by Bugis people, a large culture group in South Sulawesi.We head out the next morning to see some of the oldest coffee in the area, including Line-S and Typica that is purported to be 100 years old! Along the way, the coffee by the road is not young either.There is a lot of coffee flowering in the area, which seems to have ample water but is on the other side of the mountain as Topidi. It doesnt seem so mossy over here.Marsan and I posing on one of the ‘Merica themed scooters along the way. Even the rims!Erik is a crop assistance advisor for the government and works in the area to help Kahayya with coffee and other projects. Here we see clove drying along the pathway.Clove is a low yield crop so has a high value. While I am sure a lot of it is for export, it is also used abundantly in Indonesia. In particular there are clove cigrarettes! aka KretekThe robusta in the area are also old varieties and there are many very old trees, judging by the massive trunk size.This guy, so funny. He was following one of the farmers and would not leave his side, but was also a bit terrified by the “bule” foreigners.Our walk to the coffee farms was lovely, with dense patches of bamboo culms on a beautiful pathway.Past this old stone wall was the oldest coffee trees Marsan knew of in the area. While some plots of coffee seemed more attended too, this one seemed as if had been forgotten.The old Typica trees were massive, but leaning over. They had likely partially fallen, but then had new vertical growth. In this photo, it’s hard to see, bt Marsan is up in the tree, about 8′ off the ground.There were very few cherries, but we did find some (and I took a few to cultivate new plants). Old trees do not produce much fruit, especially if they have never been pruned.The difference between the tiny Typica coffee cherry and the much large Line S coffee was remarkable…Later on, back at Marsan’s house I took a photo of the Line S cherry, right, versus the Typica, left.The new leaf on the Typica was dramatically dark. This would be “Dutch era” typica coffee.Another cool thing in this “coffee jungle” with all the old trees was this wild fruit, they called Panasa. It was one of the most aromatic and intense fruits I have experienced, more of a spice or flavoring than something to eat outright.Growing directly from the trees was a unique sour wild fruit called Karochi. It was more like cranberry.Next day we are on a looong drive from the Southeast Sulawesi growing regions up to the places I am familiar with, Enrekjang, Toraja, Mamasa. Along the way, the great 2 wheel deals of Sulawesi!I am so curious about this rig, something I have seen all around Indo (well mainly Java actually). It’s a Vespa hacked into a 3 person, sometimes 4 or 5 person, ride, and often a couple inches off the pavement. Someone, tell me about this!More typical, the Warung on Wheels. Whether its Bakso (meatballs), Mie (noodles) or Goreng (rice) it is so amazing how people make food portable and easy in Indonesia! Imagine this as a cafe.Best shirts on this typical motor taxi. Can you be old without money? Well yes, but not in america it seems.Treats on the road. The juices in Indonesia are really amazing, and this was the specialty in a small town we stopped in. Wish I could recall what it was …A true Bugis architectureal detail on a house near our first visit in the Enrekang area. This is at the coffee drying spot of Pak Darlan, and our base for the days travelsParchment drying here looks very “commercial” in quality though, and not something we would be interested in. Coffee cherry that sat too long before pulping , sometimes to the point of rotting, produces inconisistent or unclean cups. Here, nice pale colored parchment is mixed with darker yellow to brown. A bad sign.We visited a small collector site and they had these beautiful cacao trees out front! Her name is Adriana and she has a small farmer network that is promising. We will see…Adriana was showing us natural coffee that she and her family were sorting out back. (Naturals, aka dry process, whole coffee cherry dried before pulping).One issue in coffee areas in Indo is not coffee. It’s the other crops. Here, onions grown for the market are intensely sprayed with pesticides and fungicides. Later in the trip we met someone who turned to coffee (which is not sprayed here) because he had damage to his eyesight from these chemicals.Young water buffalo – important for work, for status, for meat. Water buffalo are significant in many ways in Sulawesi.Obligatory us photo – Irham, Adriana, Daniel, Adriana’s husband, Ben my son, and me!An important collector in the are is Ma Dinkin. A collector may have a farm themselves, but they are basically a small scale community trader, buying coffee in small amounts, processing it, and trading it in the local market to larger buyers.Ma Dinkin is actually one of the more successful collectors in this area, and a community leader. Collectors provide work, loans, and pay cash for coffee so they fill an important role.Famous for her cooking too, Ma Dinkin treated us to a lovely lunch !Clove is imporant as a crop in this area as well, with these large trees and flame red tips being an easy tell.Banana and false banana are also important crops interplanted with coffee in this area.Typical Toraja – I don’t take enough photos to show the lay of the land, but its important to visualize the coffee areas. Toraja and the mountains here are limestone base rock, ancient reef in cases.Our next stop was this wonderful farm and collector site where they were roasting for the local market as well. Many producers and collectors are now roasters as well, finding new outlets for their coffee that bring in better prices!Plus – it was just a great atmosphere here. There were a few other women around, just kinda chatting while Alia was roasting the coffee – and the roasting was quite beautiful City+ roast too I might say!Our next visit was to see Eko in Pango Pango area. He is actually from Java but married into a Toraja family, and is doing some very innovative things at his coffee site, including producing natural organic insectides for his coffee trees.Plus, Eko’s dog was really a character … here he enjoying the heat from a tarp covering the coffee that was drying all day.On the way back from Eko’s place in Pango Pango, this corpulent fella was on a neighbors staircase. Someone’s living their best life!Fake albino water buffalo. Last time I was here, there was a real one, which they say is worth $100k USD! What happened to the real one … hmmmThis is the Londa burial site, one for several Torajan clans. There are hanging graves here (liang) and effigies for important ancestors, carved of wood and called Tau Taus. In the caves below is a communal burial for people without the same status as those buried individually.Supposedly, a funeral of a revered person must have a certain quota of pig and water buffalo slaughtered (which is distributed to the community at the 3-7 day funeral ceremony) in order to qualify to have a TauTau effigy made. The clothes are changed by relatives annually, or as needed.While the caves have this Indiana Jones vibe to the outsider, communal burial seems very suited to a culture that lives a deeply communal life. While it may seem curious to outsiders, isolated burial for isolated lives seems a bit sad in contrast, no?Coffee, everywhere. Even at Londa caves, all the hills around have a mix of arabica, and in this photo, robusta coffee, growing .And leaving Toraja, well, these guys. Actually, having done the 8-10 hour drive from Makessar airport to Toraja too many times to count, my first time on the 45 minute flight made me pretty giddy! Goodbye Toraja – on to Java
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8 Responses
Great pictures and a good look into Sulawesi! Years ago I bought some Sulawesi beans from Sweet Marias and loved the resultant coffee. As typical, when I went back to get more they were all gone! Thanks for the tour.
Glad you enjoyed the photolog (and coffee!). We should have more Sulawesi coffee in a couple of months 🙂
Best,
Dan
Always enjoy Tom’s travelog and there’s always something new to learn from it. Enjoyed the recent podcast with Luxia as well.
The dessert (not a juice) is most likely, Cendol with glutinous black rice as topping. It can also be Dawet (made from rice flour), but looking at the color and consistency, most likely Cendol (made from MungBeans flour).
The modded transformers vespa culture is harder to explain in comment section.. Haha..
Thank you for the insight on the desert! Appreciated … Is there any name for the whole multi-person vespa culture? I am so curious about it.
The one in your picture is a more expensive mod than the many I usually encounter, but I guess they still fall under Vespa Gembel (roughly, Hobo/Tramp’s Vespa). For many Vespa Gembel, it’s not only about modification but a whole lifestyle. Many of em are modern nomads, livin in their Vespa traveling from island to island. I met a Vespa Gembel family from Solok in a beach near Manado! This Vespa looks more like an outrigger boat but with 12 tires (or was it 14)… Yeah, they’re an interesting community but not sure you can find many in English online, NatGeo has one article I believe.
Thanks – that’s exactly what I was trying to find out. I too noted how much more “professional” this vespa was than others I have seen. It’s actually really well put together, plus they were wearing helmets!
Thank you for the review of your trip. I am excited to try the natural coffees from Sulawesi!!!!!!!!!!!!
I grew up the first half of my childhood there and my wife and I are considering a trip there for our
anniversary.
Is there anywhere you could recommend to visit a coffee farm near Palu area (somewhere in the central district) we will be staying in
Dongolla area for a bit. Or north somewhere, as we are considering transferring to Monado area for the second half?
No set plans yet, but trying to research ahead.
Thanks for any thoughts you may have.
And thank you for such excellent coffees! I grew up on Indonesian Village coffee, which may not have a refined taste, but at least could curl your hair when fixed over a fire. Now we drink three coffees (espresso) every morning, just to savor what the world offers. We so enjoy the diverse selection that you offer!
If you prefer you can reply on here, or email me [email protected]
Thanks again!
8 Responses
Great pictures and a good look into Sulawesi! Years ago I bought some Sulawesi beans from Sweet Marias and loved the resultant coffee. As typical, when I went back to get more they were all gone! Thanks for the tour.
Glad you enjoyed the photolog (and coffee!). We should have more Sulawesi coffee in a couple of months 🙂
Best,
Dan
Always enjoy Tom’s travelog and there’s always something new to learn from it. Enjoyed the recent podcast with Luxia as well.
The dessert (not a juice) is most likely, Cendol with glutinous black rice as topping. It can also be Dawet (made from rice flour), but looking at the color and consistency, most likely Cendol (made from MungBeans flour).
The modded transformers vespa culture is harder to explain in comment section.. Haha..
Thank you for the insight on the desert! Appreciated … Is there any name for the whole multi-person vespa culture? I am so curious about it.
The one in your picture is a more expensive mod than the many I usually encounter, but I guess they still fall under Vespa Gembel (roughly, Hobo/Tramp’s Vespa). For many Vespa Gembel, it’s not only about modification but a whole lifestyle. Many of em are modern nomads, livin in their Vespa traveling from island to island. I met a Vespa Gembel family from Solok in a beach near Manado! This Vespa looks more like an outrigger boat but with 12 tires (or was it 14)… Yeah, they’re an interesting community but not sure you can find many in English online, NatGeo has one article I believe.
Thanks – that’s exactly what I was trying to find out. I too noted how much more “professional” this vespa was than others I have seen. It’s actually really well put together, plus they were wearing helmets!
Thank you for the review of your trip. I am excited to try the natural coffees from Sulawesi!!!!!!!!!!!!
I grew up the first half of my childhood there and my wife and I are considering a trip there for our
anniversary.
Is there anywhere you could recommend to visit a coffee farm near Palu area (somewhere in the central district) we will be staying in
Dongolla area for a bit. Or north somewhere, as we are considering transferring to Monado area for the second half?
No set plans yet, but trying to research ahead.
Thanks for any thoughts you may have.
And thank you for such excellent coffees! I grew up on Indonesian Village coffee, which may not have a refined taste, but at least could curl your hair when fixed over a fire. Now we drink three coffees (espresso) every morning, just to savor what the world offers. We so enjoy the diverse selection that you offer!
If you prefer you can reply on here, or email me [email protected]
Thanks again!
Duane
I wish we knew more about that area.The coffee is far south, in south sulawesi mountains near kalossi etc