Bali is known by many names to those who have visited the island. Many Indonesians refer to this piece of paradise as “Pulau Dewa” or “Island of the Gods.” Since October 2002, the island has experienced a marked decline in the number of foreign tourists arriving to enjoy the scenic, cultural, and religious diversity found here. Hopefully, with a peaceful election campaign behind us, Bali will once again see tourists return in large numbers.
Our visit to Bali in March was not a party, but rather a visit to see the cooperative cultivation system of Arabica found in the mountainous areas of central Bali. Traditionally Balinese coffee was of the robusta variety. This is the coffee that many tourists who visit the island experience and love. Robusta’s origins here date back to the early 20th century or earlier. Commercial colonial plantations never made an impact on Bali because the Dutch did not gain any degree of control over the island until the 1900s. By this time, large plantations on Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi were already well established. Robusta in Bali probably came via Ampenan traders on Lombok. Growing conditions in Bali are ideal for coffee trees, and small-scale production spread rapidly in the cooler, higher-altitude areas of the island.
In recent times, with the drop in Robusta prices, Arabica has been planted in various areas of the island. Some of these plantations are in commercial plantations, however, most are beans grown by smallholders in a series of towns that sit on the volcanic peaks. Our visit was to examine the drying and processing facilities for this mountain-grown Bali Arabica.
As in the rest of the coffee world, smallholders make up the majority of producers, but receive little real financial reward for their efforts. Our concern is always to find a way to help these small producers to improve their collection, drying and classification processes so that they can market their coffee in the specialty coffee market outside of Indonesia. In most cases, growers are more than happy to hear ideas on how to improve the final quality of their product. In Bali, tree yields of raw cherries are very good. Most cooperative growers are organic without certification: the costs of pesticides vs. the price of the finished bean is meaningless. Smallholders almost universally follow the dry method of bean processing. This involves placing the fruit in the sun in large, flat concrete drying pens. The coffee is regularly raked to ensure that drying takes place at a consistent rate. Prior to drying, the cooperative removes poor-quality cherries, usually berries that are not ripe, have evidence of fungal diseases on the surface, or berries that have been damaged by birds or other pests. After drying and removal of the remaining mucilage, the grains are sorted again. This time, the beans are graded based on whether there is evidence of borer damage, discoloration, black beans, or split and split beans. This is the scope of the sorting: the cooperatives do not sort by size at origin, as the beans are usually sold to large producers who then sort further.
We like the early season greens we saw in the Bali highlands. The colors and the firmness of the grain are good, as is the general quality. The test roast led us to decide that the dry-processed bean had some characteristics reminiscent of lower-altitude Java Arabica beans. A very smooth, slightly honeydewy flavor… We are looking forward to it later in the year when we are in Bali to harvest the bulk of the 2004 crop.