phing fei

I was lucky enough to get the privilege of being a witness of the coffee roasting process at Red Cherry Blossom. On Saturday, August 16th 2014 I visited it with two other guys who were eager to see the roasting process, too. One of them was Ugie, my uni mate back in Malang years a go.

At around 9.45 Budiman started the sharing session. He told us details about coffee production. These guys at Red Cherry Blossom chose the coffee plantation and farmers by visiting them directly, whenever possible. In this case, they were also looking at the plantation with shed ground as a factor that will enrich the coffee quality. The process of drying, washing and storing the green beans by the farmers are really important to set the coffee quality at the first place. In case they couldn’t be able to do direct visit and trade with the farmers, they will seek the information from friends or colleagues on good coffee plantation, and then they do the cupping at their lab.

Initially, after they bought the green beans they will roast and that process take sometimes. Red Cherry Blossom aimed the customers to still be able to taste the natural character of the coffee. This means they have to figure out the roasting profile match for different origins of coffee. They do not want to lose the natural aroma and taste from the coffee. We can always ask them to customize the roasting profile, though. But medium profile is their signature.

Finding, tasting and defining the acidity, flavor, body and the after taste are important in every cupping process. Cupping itself is an essential process for Red Cherry Blossom to make sure that they have got the profile they need before the customers could buy and enjoy their coffee. Budiman informed us that even on professional stage of cupping there was a chart that will set the standard whether a certain coffee origin is included as a specialty coffee. It means that the coffee is one of the highest quality coffees at the international scale. Budiman also stated that they always seek for the best green beans they could find.

Next, we carried on the session by cupping three different single origins (coffee variants). There were specific techniques in cupping. The first few steps were the general procession of weighing the beans, grind them, put the coffee ground into several glasses while heated the water, and then poured the water into the glasses. That was the moment when we could see whether the coffee beans we use were good coffee or the other way around. The good coffee will bloom nicely. You can smell the fresh aroma from the coffee.

After another few minutes we left the coffee bloomed, brewed and settled, then each of us was given two spoons to set aside the coffee ground remained on top of the glasses. We were also asked to smell the coffee while we were scooping out the leftover coffee ground to be put away. This step allowed us to recognize the aroma of the coffee brewed before we sipped them, whether it was sweet, nutty, fruity, floral, etc. The next phase was scooping the crema and smelt them. Then we may slurp the coffee that we spoon out. We took our time to recognize and thus define the taste of the coffee. Here, we will discover on the acidity, flavor and body of the coffee. I must say, this process was not easy as this was my first cupping experience. It took more than two slurps from each glass to make myself sure on those aspects needed to be recognized. We then discussed on those three different coffee origins that happened to be Linggabuana from Ciwidey highland, West Java, Sapan Toraja and Batak pea berry.

Later that day, they showed us how to roast the green beans using their Cafemino roasting machine. At a certain degree Celsius temperature they will stop the roasting. Just in second crack, if I may add. On this level, the coffee released the gas but not majority of the acidity, aroma and flavor. It was thrilling to hear the first pop sound coming out from the machine, peeked and scooped out few beans from the sampler spoon as well as watched the very first roasted beans rolled down into the container just soon after the second pop sound heard. It was also fun to guess how many grams of roasted beans were produced since the result always vary, between 600-800 grams per 1 kg of green beans.

What I really like about this small roaster company was that they put a huge effort to make sure that we, as the customers or coffee consumers, feel the happiness to taste their rich flavor coffee, not so bitter but there were hints of quite significant body. We can taste a wide range of flavor in our mouth and that is one reason why I love Indonesian Arabica good quality coffee.

Please come around Jalan Cipete Raya 74C Jakarta Selatan 12120 should you discuss all things about their coffee or visit their page on http://www.RedCherryBlossoms.com for further information or making an order, twitter: @RCherryBlossom, facebook: RedCherryBlossom.id