Koffie Fabriek Aroma of Bandoeng

Good coffee, good real coffee is aged, well roasted - but not charred, it is raised organically at the right climate and elevation for each variety of bean. Good coffee should be added to milk, but milk should never be added to good coffee.

1 kg bag of Armona's arabica whole bean coffee

An original logo from the days when Indoneisa was still a Dutch colony

This is the best coffee I've found so far. I've tried Blue Mountain from Jamaica (cheesy marketing gimmick), aged Ethiopian, varietals Ethiopian, Kenyan, Sumatran, Sulwesi, Papuan and from all over the Americas.

This is a blend of Indonesian varietals. Sold only fully roasted, never as green beans.

Koffie Fabriek Aroma, in Bandung Indoneisa, is now run by the third generation of its founding family. They've been making coffee the same way since their founding. The owner travels through the islands of Sumatra, Sulawesi and Java within the Indonesian archipelago sourcing from specific growers who are all also family owned small farms only using organic farming practices. Aroma produces only 200-300 kilos per day, and they have no intention of increasing their output.

The current owner is almost fanatical about coffee. When I visited, he was covered in residue of ground coffee, husks of drying beans and ash from the roasters. Coffee has been his life. He meets with the grower himself and travels around continually sourcing the best beans. He takes extraordinary pleasure in discussing coffee and describing Aroma's approach to coffe making.

Aroma roasts both arabica and robusta beans. I'm sure that if you're a coffee fan, you've been told that arabica is the way to go for any serious coffee drinker. BS! The most important thing to good quality coffee beans is that they are grown properly for the specific bean. Robusta beans from the lower volcanic slopes near Solo on Java is far, I mean FAR, superior to any Central American blend of arabica you'll find at Starbucks, Peat's, Seattle's Best,... This is because those arabica are grown on massive plantations without native plants to offer any subtle flavors and at elevations too low to produce flavorful cherries and beans.

Green coffee beans aging in Aroma's wharehouse

Aroma gathers its beans from a handful of growers, and offers its buyers a choice of either pure robusta or pure arabica blends. The robusta beans are aged 5 years, the arabic matures for 8 years. Throughout the aging process, the beans are checked to cull beans that aren't aging properly. They are routinely aired and dried in open air and sun behind the factory. The beans, as a result, lose most of their moisture, and the bean's nautral oils mature to become more complex and flavorful. The final roastable beans are beige to medium brown, not green, yellow or light beige like you see with pre-roasted commerical beans. You won't find this being done by any of the large coffee chains or retailers. And the few aged beans they do sell are usually sold at prices starting around $20 per pound.

The coffee roasters from behind.

The round drum is where the beans are placed for roasting. The furnace below the roasting drum is wood fired using rubber wood. Coincidentally,  SE Asia is the largest producer of natural tree rubber.

The factory is more like a workshop, a ramshackle of all things related coffee and its roasting. 

Then there's the way they're roasted. Aroma roasts its beans in custom made roasters based on old designs. They're slowly roasted at a low temperature using a wood buring furnace. The fuel wood is rubber wood, which burns at a low, consistent temperature. There are no computers, not a single piece of automation. Most of the space is even natural lit by skylights and celestory windows; the scales are mechanical with needles and judged by a human eye, not digital. So it stands to reason that the beans are tended to by hand. Once the beans are properly roasted, they are air cooled, not in cooling vats. The aging of the beans means that they don't need to be charred as is the case with the premature beans at most coffee houses and shops. Those other companies have to burn their beans to burn off the edge left from not properly aging and drying the beans. Aroma's beans are roasted between a medium and dark brown, and though you wouldn't think so from sight, they yield an amazing shot of espresso. The slow medium roasting process also means that it produces great Turkish coffee (the way coffee was first drunk), because the coffee doesn't over-steep or scald easily.

Aroma is in a bit o a dilemma, though. The owner has only daughters and though he would like to keep the company in the family to carry on the traditions, most of the places he travels to in search of beans can still be dangerous, especially for a woman travelling alone. He wants Aroma to hold true to the way it makes coffee and offers it at a price that a common Indonesian can afford, about $5 per kilo ($2.40 per pound). He certainly doesn't do all this for the money. The owner teaches business courses at two local universities, and he founded and funds a charity that cares for local orphans.