Ripe coffee cherries await processing in Gunung Puntang, Bandung regency. (Courtesy of Klasik Beans)

Born and raised in the middle of a coffee orchard in the Gayo Highlands in Aceh, it took coffee farmer Armiadi until adulthood before he realized there was a whole other tome of coffee knowledge he had yet to acquire.

'€œI was only half knowledgeable about coffee. I knew how to grow coffee plants, how to nurture them and harvest the best of cherries for high quality green beans, but I didn'€™t know how to roast the beans and prepare a good cup of coffee,'€ Armiadi told The Jakarta Post.

According to the Specialty Coffee Association of Indonesia (SCAI), coffee came to Gayo relatively recently. Prawoto Indarto'€™s The Road to Java Coffee recorded that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) planted first crop in Priangan (now West java) in 1707 and exported for the first time in 1711.

The seeds only came to the North Sumatra highlands more than one-and-a-half centuries later near Toba Lake in 1888, followed by the Gayo highlands near Laut Tawar Lake in 1924.

Until today, more than 90 percent of Indonesia'€™s Arabica coffee is grown by smallholders mainly in the northern half of Sumatra. Annual Indonesian Arabica production is about 75,000 tons and nearly all of it is exported.

A farmer dries green beans. (Courtesy of Klasik Beans)
'€œThe Dutch colonials did such a good job convincing us that the coffee that we grew was unsuitable to be drunk here. Decades after they left, we still believe what they said,'€ said Armiadi, who is a member of the Koperasi Baitul Qiradh Baburrayyan (KBQB) coffee cooperative with hundreds of other farmers.

A recently released documentary on coffee, Aroma of Heaven, recollects the story of Gayo and the Manggarai people, who have mystified coffee since the Dutch colonial period as the black gold that they nurtured but were never allowed to taste the best part of.

As most of the crops were exported, people consumed leftover, bad seeds, mixing them with corn '€” or newly bought low-grade ground coffee from other countries.

The condition has slowly changed over centuries.

The 38-year-old Armiadi said the moment of enlightenment for his village was after numerous visits by foreigners, most of them researchers, to the plantations during the last decade.

'€œDuring the visits, they asked for a taste of the coffee. We, of course, couldn'€™t fulfill their request, because we didn'€™t know how to properly prepare Arabica. I then realized there was something missing in our knowledge about coffee,'€ Armiadi said.

Armiadi has since taken roasting and brewing classes. He enrolled in a Q-grader program at the SCAI and is now a certified Q-grader. Last month, he and fellow farmer Iwanitosa Putra took a roasting course under Manuel Diaz, a master roaster from the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) in Jakarta.

Armiadi'€™s passion for learning was fuelled by the sudden increase in interest in specialty coffee from Indonesian consumers in the past three years. In 2010, he began selling specialty coffee to a buyer in Jakarta. Starting with monthly 10 kilogram (kg) packages, he delivered around 150 kg of specialty coffee each month to a roaster in the capital.

Armiadi said there was a huge gap between what the consumers demanded in Jakarta and what the farmers could provide.

'€œI can deliver any amount and any grade of quality of Gayo green beans, but I'€™m not yet able to produce high quality and consistent roasted beans. It'€™s not easy or cheap to learn the skills and have the knowledge, but it needs to be done,'€ Armiadi said.

A cupping class is attended by farmers and ethusiasts. (JP/Andreas D. Arditya)
Iwan said a number of fellow farmers in Aceh had started to expand their coffee knowledge.

'€œIn the small city of Takengon, modern cafes are growing. Properly brewed coffee is in demand there. It'€™s a good sign,'€ he said.

Iwan said it might take some time to change the deeply rooted traditions of Aceh farmers, but he was optimistic.

'€œProducing specialty coffee is costly and attaining roasting skills is even harder. Not all farmers have the financial and mental capacity to do so,'€ the 34-year-old said.

A large producing country for decades, farmers in Indonesia are used to the mass production method that requires washing and wet hulling (giling basah) '€” where the beans are soaked in water to remove the outer pulp and only half-dried when hulled. This results in a large volume of beans that are clean cut with a heavy body. The method is also commonly used to achieve higher acidity.

Most farmers grow Robusta since it is more flexible. It can be planted in areas 500 meters above sea level and higher while Arabica can only grow in areas from 1200 to 1600 meters in height. Arabica is also considered richer in flavor.

'€œThe best way to improve the quality of the beans is to return to the natural process [the beans remain in the cherry for drying]. This goes for both Arabica and Robusta,'€ said Uji Sapitu, a roaster from Village Coffee and an owner of Rumah Kopi Ranin, although he admitted that it was hard to apply in large plantations and was climatically-challenged in the country'€™s regions that experienced vigorous rainfall, the conditions that could slow harvesting.

The commercialized method, he said, had also resulted in the low price of Robusta and farmers opted for Arabica for better value. A certified R-grader himself, he said Robusta had a lot of room for improvement as people would always look for its strong body, gentle feel and better aroma.

Reviving coffee on West Java soil, where the Dutch planted their first crops, Eko Purnomowidi, a co-founder and senior advisor of Klasik Beans cooperatives, has worked with a group of local residents in the Panawuan and Gunung Puntang areas in Bandung regency to produce Arabica.

The cooperatives pioneered the return of Arabica Sunda Hejo, a local coffee variety in the region.

Working with 250 farmers on 600 hectares of land using a dry hulling method, it produces an average of 400 tons of green beans a year. In 2014, 60 percent of the production was exported to Europe, while the remainder went to the US (25 percent), Australia (10 percent) and local market (5 percent).

Gaining experience from working for an exporter company in Medan, North Sumatra, Eko gathered a group of search and rescue (SAR) volunteers from Persaudaraan Gunung Puntang Indonesia (PGPI) in 2008 to research the best bean variety in the area and helped untrained locals to grow fine Arabica.

The Panawuan people had forgotten about their coffee past when the group arrived. Living near the forests that belonged to Perhutani, local residents had been permitted by former president Abdurrahman Wahid to open the forest to the planting of vegetables, which risked erosion for the mountainous areas. Some had also started planting Sumatran coffee but treated it without care, resulting in low grade beans at cheap prices.

'€œWe started with the forest conservation principle. We tried to convince locals to convert from planting vegetables to coffee. I cultivated the soil with them and did everything else together so we had a smooth transfer of knowledge,'€ he said.

Eko said he consistently used dry hulling to extract sweetness from the beans. The cooperatives also used dry hulling to produce washed Robusta in two regions in Garut, West Java, with the average production of 20 tons per year, all of which has been exported to the US in 2014.

'€œIn healthy houses live healthy residents. The same thing goes with coffee. I attribute 25 percent of coffee quality to the ecosystem, while another 55 percent depends on the picking and post-harvesting processes that result in green beans. All of these processes are done in regard to Klasik Beans,'€ he said. He added that roasting accounted for 15 percent of the quality while another 5 percent was attributable to brewing.

'€œBaristas at cafes can'€™t do anything with bad beans,'€ he went on.

Eko said working with coffee demanded patience for detailed work with low income. He said that farmers usually should have other daily sources of income as coffee was harvested annually.

'€œLook for someone that has a sense of art and also commitment and sincerity. These characters are good for growing coffee.'€