Just a few years ago Indonesia established SCAI (Specialty Coffee Association of Indonesia – http://www.sca-indo.org/). They’re now actively engaging in activities and events to “…to promote and improve the quality of Arabica coffee grown in Indonesia”. This includes the first coffee auction in Indonesia (http://www.cikopi.com/2010/10/lelang-kopi-pertama-di-indonesia/), holding Indonesia Barista Competition already for a few years now (http://www.barista-indonesia.org/2011/), holding coffee discussions, etc.

Why the “arabica” part is so important? Well because the majority of coffees here are robusta, to fill the really large market of instant coffees here. Many of them are mixed with corn… So to increase volume. So drinking some off-the-shelve, instant coffees, you can see the tiny bits of corn…

And to create coffees that are synonymous with quality beans etc, well you go the arabica way. In Indonesia we got roasters who are already well established for maybe nearly a century, a kind of family business. Some like the Aroma Coffee factory, kept the coffee for 5 to 6 years before further processing. Other roasters can market their roasted beans days after roasting. So it’s very diverse.

And ironically, all this writing above is created by a person who doesn’t have a single machine aside from his grinder, haha…

Now we’ve experienced some of the weaker espresso standards in Hawaii, for example — an example that might back up that stereotype. But one of our most memory coffee experiences also took place there.

We know we would enjoy reading more about Indonesian coffee from a consumer perspective.

It’s hard to say what ruins espresso shots more: Peerless Coffee, or the kind of establishment that decides to save a few bucks by serving Peerless Coffee. We recently listed Peerless as one of our forboding signs that bad espresso is ahead.