For more knowledge about specialty coffee, please pay attention to: Front Street Coffee (Frontsteet Coffee）
If you ask which coffee on the Front Street Bean List has the highest mellowness, we will definitely answer: Golden Mandheling Coffee, which is a high-quality dark roasted coffee bean from Sumatra, Indonesia. It not only has a solid caramel, spice, and pine flavor, but also has a mellow taste. Thick and rich, with obvious aftertaste, it is the first choice for countless friends who like black coffee, especially office workers who are busy at work. In order to taste the delicious taste of Mandheling at their work stations, they will choose to customize the coffee beans into individually packaged hanging coffee, which is convenient and time-saving.
What is "Golden Mandheling"?
During the Second World War, the battlefield spread from the European continent to Asia. Indonesia, which was still a Dutch colony at the time, was invaded by Japan in 1942 because the Netherlands declared war on Japan. Japanese troops landed on Sumatra in February 1942. The Japanese, who already loved drinking coffee at that time, felt the charm of Mandheling coffee processed by the wet planing method in northern Sumatra and became loyal fans of Mandheling.
Even the origin of the name of Mandheling coffee is rumored to be related to the Japanese. It is said that it was formed due to a misunderstanding of pronunciation. During World War II, a Japanese soldier accidentally drank a cup of strong and fragrant coffee in a local cafe. The soldier was so surprised that he asked the shopkeeper the name of the coffee. Due to the language barrier, the boss mistakenly thought that the soldier was asking about his origin, so he replied "Mandailing". After the war, Japanese soldiers commissioned an Indonesian broker to transport 15 tons of the memorable "Mandheling coffee" to Japan, and it turned out to be very popular. It can be said that this broker made Mandheling, and Mandheling also made this broker the founder of the now famous Pwanni Coffee Company (PWN).
The full name of PWN company is "N.V. Pawani Medan company", this is a trading company that mainly purchases local high-quality batches of Mandheling green beans. The coffee only produces high-quality Mandheling. "Golden Mandheling" is its signature product. The Japanese took a fancy to Sumatra coffee and purchased it for a long time. They gradually discovered that the quality of local beans often varied between good and bad. Therefore, we paid more attention to the production of Mandheling and began to formulate strict standards and methods for screening defects, including bean density, specification, shape, color and other values. The produced Mandheling requires 1 machine selection + 4 manual selections to remove defects to ensure that the produced Mandheling particles are complete, uniform, large and translucent, and also reduce the earthy and grassy smell of Mandheling. It is said that it was named "Golden Mandheling" because it glowed golden in the sun.
What’s so good about Golden Mandheling Coffee?
The characteristic of Golden Mandheling coffee is that the green beans have gone through multiple screenings and the overall quality is very high, so the extracted coffee tastes very clean. When purchasing, PWN only purchases Mandheling green beans with a mesh size of more than 18. The number of defective beans in the 300g sample is less than 3, which is the G1 grade, which is the highest grade of Indonesian green beans. Subsequently, one machine selection + three manual selections will be carried out in strict accordance with the standards to remove defective beans in an all-round way to ensure that the color, shape and size of the Mandheling coffee beans are uniform.
After Front Street purchased PWN's Golden Mandheling, it used medium-dark roasting, hoping to bring out the classic burnt taste of Mandheling. The freshly roasted golden Mandheling coffee was first cupped and tasted on Front Street Street. In the dry aroma stage, Golden Mandheling can smell cedar wood, nuts, spices, and herbs. With the injection of hot water, it smells of licorice and caramel. It tastes like dark chocolate, cocoa, nuts, and spices. It is clean overall, with obvious sweetness and high mellowness. It is not only suitable for extraction by hand, French press, siphon pot, etc., but also can show the essence of Golden Mandheling when made into hanging ears.
Next, Front Street will demonstrate to you how to brew a cup of golden Mandheling coffee with a rich, mellow taste at home:
Brewing the earphones can be very simple. You only need to add a certain amount of hot water to the coffee powder, wait for the coffee liquid to filter, and the entire extraction process is completed. The flavor of hanging ear coffee is related to many factors, such as the ratio of powder to water, water temperature, water injection method, etc. If you want to brew a cup of coffee with good flavor and taste, Front Street recommends paying more attention to the following details during operation to make the coffee in the cup taste better.
First we need to prepare enough boiling hot water, because the temperature of the water is high enough to release more aromatic substances in the coffee powder. When brewing coffee by hand, Front Street recommends brewing it at a water temperature of 86 to 93 degrees Celsius. If the temperature is only about 80 degrees, the brewed coffee will tend to be tasteless, while boiling water will easily extract a burnt and bitter taste. Therefore, Front Street will open the boiling water and let it sit at room temperature for 1 to 2 minutes, allowing the water temperature to drop slightly to about 90 degrees Celsius.
When brewing coffee by hand, the ratio of powder to water is very important. If you use a powder to water ratio of 1:12 for a cup, the coffee will be too strong and only have a bitter taste. If you use 1:18, there will be too much water and the coffee will have a bland taste and insufficient aroma. Front Street recommends brewing at 1:15 first, with 10 grams of coffee powder corresponding to 150 grams of hot water. The extracted flavor will be more balanced and the extraction will be smoother. If you don’t have a scale, just find a graduated cup.
Boil the water before brewing, tear open the sealed package, take out the coffee ear bag, and tear open the non-woven bag along the dotted line above. Then pull the two ears apart, pull the entire ear bag apart, and hang them over the rim of a cup or sharing pot.
First, inject a small amount of hot water into the first stage to completely moisten the coffee powder, and steam it for about 10 to 20 seconds to help discharge the gas in the coffee powder, in order to make the extraction in the later stage more stable. The second section of small water flow is injected steadily until the liquid level is close to full, and waits for the coffee liquid to drop until the coffee liquid flows out. Inject the last section of water until it is full, and wait until all the coffee liquid is dripped to complete the extraction.
Before drinking, Front Street will gently shake the coffee liquid evenly and drink it directly to enjoy the pure flavor of black coffee. You can add an appropriate amount of sugar or milk to blend according to your personal preference.
What should you pay attention to when buying hanging ear coffee?
Although the operation of brewing ear-mounted coffee pods is very simple, many customers still reported to Front Street that the coffee brewed by themselves is very weak and the aroma is not as rich as that brewed by hand. Compared with hand washing, you don’t need complicated tools to make ear-hanging bags, and the water injection method, time, and ratio do not need to be controlled as strictly as hand washing. You only need to ensure that there is enough hot water and a suitable ratio. However, due to the "casual" operation, the flavor of coffee is often not as rich and varied as Pour over(V60) coffee. In addition, the ear-hanging bag is ground in advance and put into the packaging bag, so the aroma is not as full as that of freshly ground coffee. If it is stored for too long for more than a few months, it may produce some woody flavor, so we need to enjoy it as soon as possible after purchasing.
In order to retain the original flavor of coffee to the greatest extent, the coffee powder used in hanging ear coffee is usually ground from freshly roasted coffee beans. The coffee beans shipped by Front Street are all freshly roasted within 5 days. If they are made into hanging ear coffee, when we receive it, it is usually 4 to 5 days after roasting, and it is just right to start brewing and tasting. Front Street recommends drinking it as soon as possible after receiving it, otherwise the aroma of the coffee will be easily lost if stored for too long. If you want to taste the coffee with the fullest flavor, Front Street recommends buying whole beans, freshly ground and brewed, for a better flavor profile.
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
