Pilgrims Coffee | Atu Lintang | Indonesia
On a weekend road trip up to Northumbria in January we happened to stumble across Pilgrims coffee on Holy Island. Having been very close to just settling for a greasy spoon on the Saturday morning I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a sign for ‘Coffee roastery this way”.
A wonderful space that has the roastery nestled at the bottom of the garden in a shipping container. The charming cafe was a great place to sit and sip through the days batch brew.
Originally set up in a small yurt in the garden, Andrew began roasting coffee in 2014 and simply aimed to supply the cafe with delicious, high quality and sustainably sourced coffee. In 2018 they needed a larger space to keep up with their expanding business, so they re-purposed an old shipping container and created the current home of the Roastery.
Andrew still heads up operations at the roastery and ensures all of the beans are of the highest quality arabica. Their state-of-the-art roaster ensures they bring out the distinctive characteristics of the beans and produce top quality coffee, every time. As an entire business, they believe it is extremely important and take great pride in sourcing coffee beans from Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance Certified farms. They always ensure that everyone that handles their coffee beans is well rewarded for their hard work - certification or not!
A fantastic roastery with fantastic morals that transcend all the way from the country the green coffee is sourced, through to the eco-friendly bags they sell the roasted coffee in.
After initially trying a Kenyan single-origin roast from Pilgrims in January they sent me an Indonesian coffee to try. An origin that produces a lot of coffee but for the amount that they produce they don’t appear too often on the speciality coffee cupping tables. Indonesian coffees typically have a big body and are known for their deeper chocolatey flavours. I was pleasantly surprised though that this wasn’t your average Indonesian coffee.
In the Aceh region, at the northern end of the island of Sumatra is the district of Atu Lintang. This Organic coffee is grown at between 1300-1500masl by around 600 farmers who also grow fruit and vegetables to sell at local farmers markets.
It is processed by the traditional technique of Giling Basah which is the same as the washed process but once the drying coffee, in its parchment reaches around 25% moisture content it’s put through machines to remove that parchment. One problem with this is that the beans are soft and susceptible to damage and even more so once the parchment is removed, so it’s a dangerous game. The benefit though is that the now raw coffee beans are Exposed and free to dry more quickly in the sun and air, speeding up the process in an extremely humid climate. Left too long to dry in these humid conditions, the coffee would over ferment and go mouldy, so it’s kind of a necessary evil.
This particular coffee has been expertly processed, resulting in a clean, sweet coffee with a deep rich body.
To start with the fragrance of the coffee reminded me of those sugar-coated nuts that you get when you’re on holiday. Although it hinted at a more typically Indonesian depth of body the sweeter notes were initially more prevalent. As I brewed the coffee the aroma was layered with notes of berries and summer fruits particularly when I was making a V60.
The coffee starts by sitting on top of your palette and doesn’t give its game away straight away by slowly evolving into its profile. It has a medium body that is almost tart at points. The fruitness is the strongest at the front of each sip, it then meanders its way through your palate layered with those sugar-coated nuts and leaves with an after taste of vanilla. The profile is subtly complex with no big bold flavours it makes for a really pleasurable drinking experience. The coffee cools and engages the sides of your palate, ending on a tangy finish.
An absolute easy sipper, a coffee that can be enjoyed every day and performs well in all methods that I tried.
Brewed as a V60, Aeropress, Stovetop and Espresso. Hard to choose which was the best method however I liked that the typically richer body came out a little more with non-paper filter methods (espresso kettle) and produced a well-balanced coffee.