Java – Frinsa Collective – Green Unroasted

Taste: Sweet, aromatic and full bodied, not as bold as a Sumatra, but very smooth with a nutty taste. This is the base of the famous “Mocha Java” blend (see below for more on this blend). It is a mild coffee that needs the boost of a Yemen or Ethiopian Yirgacheffe to bring it to life. If you like a gentle everyday kind of coffee this could be just that. On a side note, Java is one of the most aromatic green beans in our inventory – a wonderful fragrance akin to black locust trees in bloom.

Roast: A medium hard bean, we recommend keeping this bean to a Medium to Medium/Dark roast.  We think it cups best just after 1st crack is complete.

About: The Frinsa Collective is focused around a family-owned estate known as Frinsa, run by Wildan Mustofa. The “collective” refers to the family’s purchasing of coffee from neighboring producers for processing and sale from the Finsa Estate. According to green-coffee buyer Piero Cristiani, Wildan and his family are progressive, focusing on experimental processing more than is commonly found in Java. The Collective produces Honeys, Naturals, anaerobic-environment fermentation, and is also separating out single-variety lots. Wildan oversees the agricultural and processing side of the business, while his wife Atieq handles contracts and their son Fikri does the cupping.

The coffee is rinsed, sorted, and depulped the same day it’s delivered, and fermented for 18 hours. It’s washed to remove the mucilage, then dried on patios for 7–10 days.

Coffee was introduced throughout the islands of Indonesia by the Dutch in the 1600s, and was first exported by the Dutch East India Company in the early 1700s. Java was the first of the islands to cultivate coffee, and that long history with the plant on the land is part of the reason that coffee is generically known as “java.” Large Dutch-owned plantations were the norm, and the laborers and locals suffered financially and politically under the colonial regime. The 1860 novel Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company outlined many of the ways that the Dutch government and landowners abused and oppressed the Indonesian people, specifically on Sumatra and Java. Poverty, starvation, and destitution were common among coffee workers and within the indigenous communities.

In the 1860s and 1870s, a coffee-leaf-rust epidemic decimated the coffee market in Indonesia, and led to the abandonment of many estates by the Dutch. As the plantations broke up, laborers took up small plots of the land, eventually replanting most of the old-stock Arabica with Robusta coffee and various more disease-resistant hybrids. This land redistribution created the predominance of smallholder growers on the islands, which exists to this day. Taken as a whole, Indonesia is the fourth-largest coffee-producing country in the world, though Java—once a powerhouse producer and the primary origin for the world’s most sought-after supply—has not come near to reclaiming its position at the top of the list worldwide.

Javanese coffees have long been distinguished for their earthy, savory, somewhat vegetal or herbaceous characteristics. This is in part contributed by the climate and the mix of varieties grown, but also due to a specific post-harvest processing style called Wet-Hulling, or locally known as Giling Basah, which imparts much of the unique qualities these coffees have.