About This Coffee

Iwannitosa (Iwan) Putra is a farmer and processor based in Atu Lintang, Takengon district, with his wife, a teacher at a nearby school, and his two children. Iwan has a small farm of his own, but also buys cherries from 440 local smallholder farmers. He has built a wet mill and drying tents to process his coffee, and also treats his waste water properly. Iwan and his farmers have an extremely strict tolerance for high quality cherry selection, only selecting the highest quality cherries for processing to maintain quality.

We first visited Iwan back in late 2017 and were hugely impressed by his operation and passion for excellence. We donated a small roaster and a moisture meter to help Iwan and his farmers with their development and we are delighted to have the opportunity to showcase Iwan's coffees in Europe.

This lot is sourced from 50 farmers in Bener Meriah, central Aceh.

The Region

Iwan’s processing facility is located at the top of a mountain around 1 hour from Takengon city, in Atu Lintang district. The mountains of Takengon are one of the most famous regions in Sumatra for high quality arabica coffees. 

Aceh has a long history with coffee, which began during the Dutch colonial period in the 1930s. Even after the end of colonization in 1945, the coffee plantations remained. These plantations were later distributed by local authorities to the Gayo people, an ethnic group native to Central Aceh and Bener Meriah.

The Gayo take great pride in being coffee farmers. Even during difficult times—such as the GAM rebellion from 2003 to 2005, or the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022—they did not abandon their land. The Gayo were among the few who continued to care for and maintain their coffee trees, despite the challenges.

The Process

Iwan accepts only the ripest and highest quality cherries for processing. These cherries are floated for density separation and then dried on a patio under a specialised canopy for 15-25 days depending on climatic conditions.

History of Coffee in Sumatra 

Coffee seeds first arrived in Java from India in 1696, but it was a swing and a miss; the initial plantings were wiped out by flooding. Take two, cuttings from Ceylon, arrived in 1699 with a guy named Hendrik. It’s unclear when coffee planting arrived in Sumatra specifically. Java was the coffee king of Indonesia (aka the Dutch East Indies) for at least 100 years after cuttings first arrived from Ceylon before coffee of any significant volume was grown on other islands. And well into the 20th century, much coffee grown throughout Indonesia was called Java.