Aged coffees yield intensely rustic flavors that tend to please the wet hulled coffee crowd. Earthy aroma, pungent bittering, brown spices, tobacco, cedar, pepper cask, thick body, and more. City+ to French. Good for espresso.

The first sip of an aged coffee might come as a shock, until your taste buds adapt themselves to the extreme flavors: intense, deep, woody, syrupy, rustic. Aged coffees are well-suited to darker roast levels, though I must say, we also found the City+ level to be quite interesting, if not agreeable! The grounds have an oaky fragrance, hickory bbq, and unsweetened cocoa, with a very light sweetness of a beeswax candle. The wet aroma is a mix of deep-toned bittersweetness and aromatic wood, though we also sensed a bit of dried fruit, and slight rum note. What an intense brewed coffee this is, heavy bodied with low acidity, deeply bittersweet, and with complex earthy aroma throughout. There are some initial sweet notes of sorghum syrup, and pungent caramelized sugars that fade to strong bittering notes, like a mix of unsweetened cocoa powder and fragrant brown spices, which lingers in the aftertaste. The sweetness is mild, but comes through in some of the rustic aromatics, like pipe tobacco, caramel popcorn, and fresh cut cedar boards. I also found it has this unique flavor I can best describe as the smell of a pepper cask grinder. If you've tried aged coffee, this should all sound familiar! They're a singular flavor type, and one you might find infinitely pleasingor maybe not! Definitely for fans of wet hulled Indonesian coffees, as well as anyone who enjoys tasting the unique range of flavors found in different process methods. I think it really helps to let this one rest at least 3-4 days after roasting. The offgassing helps with extraction, and some of the disparate flavors from processing will start to coalesce with the heavier roast tones in the cup.

This crop of aged Sumatran coffee comes from a trio of coffee collectors working around Lintong Nihuta region in North Sumatra. Collectors are local intermediaries who often are the linchpin connecting farmers to the market. A lot rides on the long-standing relationships between collectors and farmers, and the collector is really the key person to determine coffee quality. Aged coffees from Indonesia have a long history; in the age of sail-powered marine transportation, everything arrived on US shores as aged coffee. Over time in the ship's hold, the coffee turned a dark color, and became seasoned with a host of flavors, some desirable and some certainly not. It's no surprise that the time it took to get from port to port increased the coffee's value. At that time Indonesian coffee fetched upwards to 27 cents per Lb, whereas Central and South American coffees cost around 3 cents. Now coffee is intentionally aged to transform the flavors - this lot was aged for 5 long years after wet hulling in a controlled manner. The coffee is typically stored in jute bags and stacked with pallets in between for aeration. Every few months, it will be rotated, often emptying from the bags onto the floor, and repackaging again to try and maintain consistency. Aged coffee is not just old, past-crop coffee. It is monitored during aging, regularly rotated and cupped for flavor as time goes by. This lot emulates this historic processing method, resulting in a truly unique, and intense Indonesian coffee profile. This lot was harvested in 2021, and initially wet-hulled, the traditional process method in Sumatra.